


Cold Hearts

by thefrailtyofgenius



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Warm Bodies (2013)
Genre: (i think), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Warm Bodies Fusion, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Background Mystrade, M/M, Major Character Undeath, Minor Character Death, My First AO3 Post, Rating May Change, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:36:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7830577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefrailtyofgenius/pseuds/thefrailtyofgenius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>London is dead, and Britain's beating heart has shifted elsewhere. Those that remain struggle to reorganize and face the vast numbers of undead that haunt the capital. Among the survivors, John Watson searches for a cure that may not exist and a purpose he may never find. Little does he know that the key to his plight waits mournfully in a vacated opera house within the hollowed-out city, playing the violin and struggling to remember a life of brilliance.</p><p>(Response to a prompt from <a href="http://astudyinrose.tumblr.com/post/143126732781/warm-bodies-johnlock-au-where-sherlock-is-r-and">astudyinrose</a>, Warm Bodies AU, rating may change along with my courage as a smut-writer, WIP)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Citadel

***

  


#### Prologue

  
London. A city of history, drama, secrets. Tragedy.

What was once a noble city of intrigue had been struck down, decimated. Everything here that used to mean something, anything, had been wiped away like so many smears on the looking glass of time.

He sneered. Way too poetic. A man who had forgotten his own name had no business creating verse. It wasn’t as if he had an audience even if he did begin waxing lyrical. And for reasons long unremembered, he longed for an audience. Someone to--

\--what was that?

He raised his head to the wind and breathed in, long and deep.

Food.

He raised one shoulder, trying to think. Trying...trying...and failing. Food. He did not want to feel the hunger, but that did not make it any less real.

His coat flapped around his legs, driven by wind and rain he did not feel. Around him were others. More heads raised, noticing the scent on the breeze he had already detected.

“Hmmmm.” A thoughtful sound made laughable by the hateful emptiness of his brain. He wished he could just think.

_Why can’t people just think?_

He shook his head, dark, damp curls sticking to his face, unheeded. The scent was too distracting. He had to get away from the others.

A screeching sound further distracted him. Corpses. More. More dangerous and deader.

Which was saying something because he was very dead. Were there degrees of deadness? Was “deadness” a word? He folded his pale hands in front of his face, cherishing the unbroken line of thought.

“Shhhh…” One of the others shuffled closer. (Also dead. Everyone, dead.) She wore a bloody labcoat over a torn pink jumper. “Shhhh…” emerged from her mouth again.

He inclined his head. Best not to dawdle. The hunger pulled at him just as much as the danger of the deader ones pushed him away. It was time. He looked up once more at the abandoned city skyline. Still picturesque but meaning nothing so much as the one thought he could always focus on: food.

***

  


#### The Citadel

  
“Mary, wait!”

The blonde woman nearly through the gates turned back, flashing a quick smile and readjusting her grip on her pistol. She stroked it lovingly as she waited to hear what he had to say.

He swallowed. “Be careful.”

Mary arched a brow at him. “We’ve been through this, John. I have more experience in these areas. The Citadel has few enough doctors as it is, we can’t afford to lose you, too.” She brushed a hand along his waist and leaned in to peck him on the cheek. “I’ll just pop off and grab some supplies with the kiddies here and be back before you know it.”

As if she was hitting the Tesco just round the block. “You need to take this seriously,” he hissed. There were zombies out there. Actual corpses walking about, trying to get a tummyful of brains. John shuddered involuntarily. “You’ve got your silencer, I see. What about knives?”

A lanky teen leaned out from behind Mary and thrust a wicked looking hunting knife nearly beneath his nose. “Right ‘ere, Doc,” he said in a cheerful voice completely at odds with his...well, his knife.

“Billy!” Mary snapped, but before she could react, John had swiped a leg smartly behind the boy, keeping a hold of his knife-wielding hand and twisting slightly.

“Oy!” Billy yelled, no longer grasping the knife and instead cradling his wrist. “I didn’t mean nothin’, I swear!”

John grinned and tossed the blade in the dirt in front of his face. “So you’re good on melee weapons.”

Mary scowled. “Now who’s not taking this seriously?” She griped. “There’s no need to show off, John. If he’s got a broken wrist, he’ll be of no use in the city.” Billy whimpered at her feet.

“It’s only a sprain. I’m a damn good doctor. He’ll be fine. I’ll even wrap it if you’re that worried about it.”

“Don’t bother,” Mary cut in before Billy could accept the offer. “He needs to pick up that great bloody knife and remember how to use it to actually protect himself.” She nudged the piece on the ground before a silver-haired man grabbed it and helped him up, taking care not to jostle his arm.

“Ease up, Mary,” he muttered.

“Don’t coddle the murder-babies, Lestrade,” she murmured right back.

He snorted and threw John a look as the screen behind them flashed into motion.

“Ah, I am pleased to see we’ve managed to assemble a semi-competent group here, Morstan.” The face on the screen looked anything but pleased. In all the years he’d known him, John had never seen Mycroft Holmes smile.

Admittedly, there wasn’t all that much to smile about, apocalypse and plague and downfall of civilization and all. The blank face turned toward him. “Doctor Watson, there’s been a change of plans. I want you and Doctor Stamford going with the group.”

Lestrade grinned at him even as Mary’s frown deepened.

“Minister, sir!” Mary all but shouted at the screen. “That’s a risk no one wants to take. As I was just explaining to John--”

“I’m well aware of your arguments, Miss Morstan, as you are of mine,” Holmes interrupted. John detected a hint of a sigh in his voice. “However much you seek to protect your fiancee, it cannot take precedence over the survival of the city. Doctors Watson and Stamford will be under your personal protection during this outing, and I expect they and their expertise to return to the Citadel intact, do I make myself clear?”

Minister Holmes had clearly never been in the military, but then, neither had Mary. Mary had never taken orders well, and Mycroft did not give them. His strong suggestions and even more strongly supported arguments were enough to convince even the staunchest protesters of their own error.

Mary nodded once, firmly. “Alright, luv.” She turned to John. “Go and fetch Stamford. I’m assuming we’re looking for specific pharmacological supplies this time?” She was looking at John, but her question included the Minister as well.

Holmes confirmed her suspicions. “We have reason to believe the Citadel has new vulnerabilities to chemical warfare. The corpses are as numerous and resilient as ever, despite your repeated raids.” He glared at Mary, as if the continued existence of the zombified human race were her fault alone. “If the threat is growing stronger, we will need stronger methods with which to fight it. I have already informed Doctor Watson of my countermeasures and he has assured me that they can be achieved.”

Mary whipped her head toward John. “You _knew_ about this?” She spoke through gritted teeth. “You didn’t think to tell me?”

John rolled his eyes even as he typed in the code to the holding area. “Oh yes, of course!” The door swung upon, and he turned. “Forgot to mention that, did I? _Of course_ I wanted to tell you. I was sworn to secrecy, just as I’m sure you are on any number of issues, _Agent_.”

Mary paled. “John.” She grabbed his shoulder before he could slide through the door to retrieve Stamford. “What did he tell you?”

John jerked his arm away. “Only that you’ve had a larger role in this ‘government’ than I was aware of. Maybe some secrets should stay secret, _dear_.” He slammed the door.

John clenched and unclenched his fists on the other side of the door before setting off for the labs to find Stamford. Mycroft had mentioned that Mary had become important to the establishment early on. John assumed it had something to do with her arms training, a skill she had (thankfully) learned from her father before he’d been struck down in the crisis. It was no surprise to him that those skills made her valuable to Mycroft. It was a surprise, however, to learn that she had become so important so quickly.

Even before the crisis, Mycroft Holmes had been a powerful man. The fact that his was not a household name made no difference--no one could ever see the puppetmaster, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t holding all the strings and suffering none of the consequences. John would begrudge him his ambition were it not so clear that he took no pleasure in it. He sincerely seemed to want the Citadel (and the human race) to be safe, secure, and (failing happy) at least content, without thinking once of his own needs.

He reached a set of metal double doors and rapped on them three times. Pause. Once. Pause Twice. He was greeted shortly by a plump face full of concern. “John? Are they back already?”

John grimaced. “Bad news, mate…”

  
***

  
Despite his general roundness and pleasant demeanor, Dr. Mike Stamford had an uncanny knack with a crossbow. To think such skills would have remained undiscovered without the crisis. He heaved the weapon over his shoulder and followed behind Mary, John, and a promising recruit, Henry. Billy Wiggins covered his back, followed by Soo Lin, Lestrade, and two guards from the wall, Sally Donovan and Philip Anderson. Minister Holmes was certainly right in that a capable group had been assembled.

Other than Stamford’s crossbow and Billy’s knife, the rest of the party were carrying silenced weapons. A significant amount of training at the Citadel was devoted to learning stealth and stealth weaponry. Inability to stay quiet on a mission could mean death (or undeath).

While John was still running on the assumption that the crisis was caused by some sort of plague and was therefore curable by chemical means, Minister Holmes had insisted upon concentrating his efforts on the living; ensuring the survival of those that remained was far more important to the official than trying to save what he saw as unsaveable.

To that purpose, John and Mike Stamford had been tasked with acquiring synergistic pharmaceuticals to strengthen the living population. The means by which Minister Holmes planned to introduce these new measures was above both their pay grades.

So, armed to the teeth and with experienced doctors and lifelong Londoners leading the way, the team marched into the breach.

  
***

  
The smell was getting closer. He jerked his head at his lab-coated companion, who bared her teeth and jerked her head toward an ornate multi-level building. The door swung slightly ajar.

Food.

“Llll...lab,” she uttered beside him. He nodded. Food was always prevalent in the lab because...because…

He shook his head. Perhaps he would be able to think when his hunger was sated. _If_ his hunger could ever be sated.

Other dead were coming, staggering through the open door. He snorted. They’d never make it to the labs. Too obvious.

He tugged Labcoat’s sleeve and gestured to the fire escape hanging down the far wall. High ground.

It wasn’t the cleverest he thought he might do, but…he smirked absently and grunted, “Trrr...rrrap.”

  
***

  
St. Bartholomew’s Teaching Hospital had once been a hub of healthcare and history quite near the epicenter of London. However, the unfortunate circumstances leading to the the undeath of most of London’s population had moved the city’s center quite considerably, the Citadel being quite removed from London’s still iconic skyline. St. Bart’s was now quite a trek.

Stamford was panting. “John,” he muttered, crossbow pointed at the ground, “since when did going to hospital become more painful than being there?” He chuckled weakly to himself.

John swallowed a grin. Honestly, if Minister Holmes had known he wanted to send medical staff on this raid, he should have informed them sooner. Mike had barely had time to grab a weapon, much less train for the level of athleticism required to evade the corpses.

Not that they were all that fast, of course. Dead muscle was not quick muscle. Still, he nudged Lestrade. “Keep an eye on Mike, will you, Greg?”

The other man nodded and dropped back in line behind Stamford.

The huge hospital loomed closer and closer.

  
***

  
Despite the calamity it had endured, Bart’s still smelled strongly of disinfectant. They had only encountered one corpse just as they entered, which Mary had quickly and quietly dispatched. Just to be safe, she’d allowed Billy to remove its head afterward, the two of them grinning ghoulishly at the sight.

It was an activity John took no pleasure in. As a doctor, he was constantly haunted by the knowledge that all of these supposed creatures were once (and likely still) human. They deserved respect and healing. Even the soldier in him winced at the desecration of the bodies post-mortem, although the practice certainly was not uncommon in war zones, even Before.

Billy had carefully wiped the large blade on his trousers and nudged the head away with his foot, then turned and took no more notice of the thing as they reached their destination.

John ran a hand along the wall as their little band trudged down one of the main halls. Blood spattered it in places, much like every other building in London, but as always, there was more to the story.

Bart’s had opened its doors to the first sufferers, hoping a quick response would be the key to defeating whatever had so irrevocably changed these people. Instead, many of London’s finest physicians and surgeons fell to the first wave of corpses, adding themselves to the number of afflicted and making the crisis stronger and more terrible for it. This was the blood of hope being subdued.

John removed his hand.

They hadn’t known. The corpses were strong. They were aggressive. They didn’t seem to feel pain, and attempts to injure or kill them were met with no palpable response besides anger. The only thing that seemed to work was destroying the brain. This presented a problem, for such surgical precision (or ruthless violence, as Billy had shown) was lacking in most Londoners. They were ridiculously easy targets.

John, recently wounded from Afghanistan and spoiling for a fight, was not.

Just as he suspected Mary had found herself a new line of work in the beginning of the crisis, John had quickly set himself to the task of aiding and protecting what was left of the medical workforce of London. But as he’d studied corpses, bandaged wounds, and dispatched threats, Mary had apparently been...what?

He directed his gaze toward the front of the group where she crouched tensely against the wall. What had Mary done in the beginning that had been so integral to Mycroft?

She looked back at him, back at _them_ , that moment and gestured for them to follow silently. They were approaching the labs.

  
***


	2. An Occurrence in the Laboratory

The scent was back. And close. Labcoat retreated into a corner closet with him and they waited.

They were good at waiting. He had never much liked to do it, but that didn’t matter now. It was necessary. He gazed, nearly unseeing, at the far door, across rows of lab tables and broken microscopes.

He liked the labs. Couldn’t remember why, but he always felt as if something was going to be solved here.

Oh yes, the hunger. That was right.

He growled slightly under his breath, somehow more aware than ever of the need to remain still and silent, even as his mind struggled weakly in the enforced stasis.

The door opened, admitting...others. Not dead. Food. They smelled so good. He was so hungry.

He nearly stepped forward, but some small spark in his brain denied him. _Not yet_ , it whispered. _Hold on. Resist. Wait._ Labcoat had tilted her head, waiting for his cue, some sort of camaraderie formed between them over their hunt. He shook his head slowly.

They waited.

  
***

  
One by one, the others walked in. Blonde woman, tall man, short man, fat man, grey man, small woman, dark woman, young man, another tall man.

From the small crack in the closet, his light eyes followed these beings dully, searching for something. What was he looking for? Labcoat tugged on his sleeve, the hunger blazing in her eyes. He shook his head again. There was something here. He just had to find it. Then he could give in. Then they could eat.

The alive ones had started opening cabinets, drawing out packages and bags with careful quietude and communicating with their hands. The short one was directing them toward which packages to grab and was studying another when there was a whisper of sound in the hall.

All in one motion, the man jerked toward the entrance, raised his silenced weapon, and shot the corpse between the eyes.

_Interesting._

Still standing listlessly in the closet, he sharpened his gaze. The short man. Tan, but not above the wrists. Stands like a soldier. Wearing a thin ball-clasp chain: dog tags. Expert marksman but clear medical knowledge.

What did it mean?

Before he could draw any conclusions, there was a scream. More dead streamed into the lab, drawn by the same scent that had brought him here. He heard the _shink-shink-shink_ of the suppressed gunfire, and then he smelled it.

First blood.

The hunger ripped through him, leaving nothing, no thought or judgment in its wake. Only emptiness, a voracious chasm needing sustenance.

He and Labcoat burst from the closet none too quietly, but the alive ones were distracted by the wave of dead at the door.

For being so very quiet before, it seemed that every member of this particular group of the living was shouting now, warning their friends, yelling out their adrenaline...except the short one. The man remained deucedly silent, focused on each individual shot, quickly but carefully aimed at critical areas: knees, eyes, throat, head.

Never the heart. Even he knew that. The dead do not need their hearts.

The short blonde woman was yelling curses, holding off the others. Her position covering the group near the back of the lab meant she was unprotected. An easy target.

Labcoat had pulled away to approach the youngest one. Good strategy, he mused as he grasped the blonde’s leg and jerked it out from under her.

She shrieked, still squeezing rounds into the wall and ceiling as she fell. He scoffed inside. The fool was lucky she hadn’t killed the rest of her group. Poor control. She would be no loss to the living.

Even as he grabbed at her head, avoiding the ineffectual swings of her empty gun, he felt stirring of deductive thought clamoring to weigh in. Clearly proficient in a variety of weapons. The hair, from a bottle, meant to impress. A ridiculous vanity, even without having to worry about basic survival on a daily basis. The ring, recently engaged.

“John!” She yelled as he finally divested her of the gun. The short man turned abruptly. Ah, that must be the fiancee then.

“Mary?” His voice was little more than a whisper, eyes flashing dark fire across the room, but ‘John’ was too far away to do anything, and more dead had heard the chaos and were converging on the building. Knowing he could do nothing for her, he turned and continued to competently dispatch the others.

Taking advantage of his distraction, the blonde drew a knife from inside her vest and planted it in his abdomen. It did nothing, of course. Idiot. But the deductions continued to flow, faster than ever. A serial liar as well. Perhaps cheating? No, bigger. Secret tattoo, likely the name of a previous admirer. Unimportant. The locket she wore was clearly more so, maybe at the center of her lies. The initials, A.G.R.A. engraved upon its silver surface.

Moments later, that silver was tarnished with blood as he smashed her head one last time against the cold tile floor.

The shattered skull beckoned. The hunger did not demand it—he could leave her brain intact and she’d rise again with the rest of them. But this woman had been of little use to the living and would be of even less use to the dead; _better not to add her to the ranks then_ , he thought as he began to eat, heedless of the massacre taking place around him. The brain was the best part anyway. All those memories...

  
***

  
_A small girl was running through a field. Her laughter rang across the grass as she sprinted toward a tree that looked as if it had been there for hundreds of years._

_She collapsed on its roots and looked up at the sky, a pure sort of blue uninterrupted by clouds or dreary thoughts. She sighed and flopped over to look at the man who’d been jogging after her._

_“So why are we here, papa?” She tugged up a handful of grass and threw it at him as he drew closer._

_The man waved away the blades as he sat down. He removed his rucksack and took out a heavy metal object. She’d seen them before in Westerns and action flicks her friends had never been allowed to watch. A gun._

_“Mary, love, it’s about time you learned the family business.”_

  
***

  
He’d barely had a bite before Labcoat bumped into him, her face smeared with blood, as she fought off the grey-haired man from their group. “Shhhh,” she hissed as she noticed him behind her. “Shhhh—”

“What? You bloody corpse! You want me to shut up?” The grey-haired man yelled as he brandished a large knife at her. “If you wanted quiet, bitch, then you shouldn’t have fucking killed my friend!” She shook her head, moving to avoid the wicked-looking serrated blade

He looked on with interest. Labcoat appeared to have been quite successfully well-fed. He tugged her sleeve and jerked his head at the door. It was time to go.

She nodded, dodging the knife again.

He began to get up, but remembered there was still a perfectly good brain lying on the floor. _Waste not._ He gathered it up and stuffed it into the pockets of his great coat.

The other dead had thinned out, leaving a bloody trail and a room less alive than it had been minutes ago. He spared a mournful thought for ‘John’, the short man who had caught his interest earlier. So little did these days. He treasured the times when he could deduce without having to consume someone else’s brain and memories, and the man had been a conductor of his own lost brilliance. Otherwise, everything was so _dull._

Labcoat was still backing away from the grey-haired man when he heard, “Greg! Everyone, sound off! Where’s Mary?”

That was the voice from before! He was so relieved he nearly forgot that they would likely kill him if they saw him. He began to edge away from the remains he had created.

He needn’t have bothered. More dead were coming, and the living had bigger problems. The grey man, ‘Greg’ pulled away and responded in a low voice, “Ta, still kicking here, but we need to go, John.”

“Not without Mary,” the shorter man returned, approaching them from across the room.

_Shink-shink._ The dark woman ran through the door, aiming a few last shots behind her, and wedged it shut behind her. “More coming. We’ll have to take the fire escape.” She gestured with her weapon.

_Ah._ It wasn’t a bad plan. But he knew the way down would not be as abandoned as it had been when he and Labcoat had come up. Of course, the way would be safe for them no matter how full of corpses it became: they were dead.

There was a pounding on the door. Labcoat was climbing out the window. He grabbed the locket from what was left of the blonde woman and began to crawl after her.

The door burst open, admitting the second wave of dead. More yelling. This time, ‘John’ was participating in the noise as well, shouting orders and foisting the bag of medical supplies on the overweight member of their group. “Mary!” He turned, fending off a corpse. It appeared one of Labcoat’s meals had already arisen in her absence. “Goddammit, they got Billy!”

‘Greg’ snorted, “Yeah, and the bitch that got him just got away. Like we should be doing, John!” He pointed at the window, where the fat man and the dark woman were already climbing out.

“Then go!” John shouted back. “I’ll be right behind you!” He shot another of the others and muttered, “Right after I find her.”

He was almost to the window. The living were too focused on escaping to bother with him. He was all but free. But the short, interesting man’s continued presence ate at him. His fiancee was dead; “finding her” would not end well for anyone.

“Oh god, no.”

_Bugger._

The dead were mostly occupied with the fresh kills in the room, but some had noticed the even fresher living man crouched on the floor beside his late bride-to-be. Of course, the short man was not entirely defenseless: he still held a loaded weapon (clearly better at keeping track of bullets than his deceased girlfriend), but as he watched, ‘John’ seemed to cave in on himself, unwilling to fight back.

He’d seen this before. The living had an odd tendency to thrive on the companionship of other living. The dead were not nearly so sentimental, he mused. Even Labcoat, the closest thing he could call ‘friend’ had left, and he did not begrudge her for it. But here was this enigma of a man, willing to let his life slip away for some _woman._

_I won’t let you._ He turned from his position nearly out the window, thinking quickly. Not quickly enough. If the man had lost his will to live, he might as well be dead anyway. At least then he’d be safe--

_Oh!_

He ran from the window and dove upon the man, who cried out in fear in spite of himself but still would not fight back, his eyes tightly closed.

“Shhhh…” he shushed the living man, mimicking his absent companion. “Shhhh…”

John opened his eyes and stared. “Wha--”

He cut off the protest with a hand over his mouth and shushed him once more. Now, to try for some actual communication. “Fffff-ffrrriennd.” He pointed at himself.

John’s eyes widened above his pale hand, shaking his head and causing more blood to smear across his face.

He smelled delicious. It was always the scent that did it. It tickled his senses and awakened the hunger. He shook himself. Not now. _How do I make him smell dead?_

There were brains in his pocket. John was not likely to enjoy that--but then, he wasn’t likely to enjoy anything about this plan. _Why am I doing this?_

It was the million-pound question he would have to answer later. Meanwhile, the dead were beginning to take notice of John’s renewed struggles. Hands pushed at his chest, at his stomach. Wait. There was a hole in his stomach, _thanks to that woman._ He reached between them and dug into the small cavity, coming back with grubby, blood-smeared fingers.

No, he definitely wouldn’t like this.

He trailed the bloody digits up John’s arm, smearing across his throat and onto his face. It was, he supposed, objectively repulsive. Yet John just stared, mouth slack beneath his bloody palm.

He removed his hand and leaned in, inhaling deeply against his neck. No amount of rotten blood would erase his delectable scent, but he had done a great deal to mask it.

He held out a hand to John, who numbly grasped it and hoisted himself off the floor. The dead around them stared but continued feeding, smelling nothing unusual. Not anymore.

He smiled and turned to John, who was staring at their still-joined hands. “Jjjjjjohhn,” he forced out. He was not used to speaking. Labcoat had never required it, and honestly, he could not ever remember being too fond of it (or people) in the first place. But needs must.

John jerked back from him, but he tightened his hold on the shorter man’s hand. “How do you know my name?” He whispered harshly.

The answer to that would take too long. He shook his head and tugged on his hand, pleased when the man stumbled after him. The fire escape was too suspicious now. They’d walk right through the door and out the back, so he could keep John close and maintain the ruse. No problem.

  
***

  
When they walked past the others, John paled but stayed steady, clinging to his hand like a lifeline. He supposed in a way it was.

They wound through the halls in silence and finally emerged onto the street behind the hospital. He would need to communicate with John again, but even having gotten him out of the lab unscathed felt like a huge success. He was on fire! Thinking so clearly, and he’d barely had any of the brain! He could kiss John, honestly, although his newfound clarity alerted him that this would be deeply unwelcome, and not just because he was dead. But bigger problems lay ahead.

The street was filled with the dead, wandering aimlessly. Without the hunger, they tended to fall into predictable patterns. Not all the same, but still recognizable. Perhaps they were reminiscent of the lives they’d lived before the crisis. He put that contemplation aside for now, determined to navigate through what must seem like a terrible nightmare to John.

He pulled the dazed man against the wall and let go of his hand, instead raising them palms out in what he remembered as a universal sign of goodwill.

John was breathing harshly and simultaneously trying to stifle the sound, clearly having trouble accepting the situation. He made no move to run, which was good.

He gestured to the dead around him. They were aimless now, but if they suspected food was right beneath their noses, well… He drew close to John. “Daaa...nnngggerouussss.”

Something changed, just slightly, in John’s demeanor. The man still had no idea what was going on, but his posture straightened, his fists clenched, his face hardened.

Soldier, he remembered from his earlier deductions. The skills, the tan, the dog tags. This was a man comfortable with war. _Which one?_ He wondered absently. _Afghanistan or Iraq?_

Instead, he offered his hand again and grunted a simple instruction: “Beee deaaddd.”

  
***


	3. Being Dead

He was dead.

Had to be. There was simply no other explanation for the surreal situation in which he found himself.

Holding hands with a corpse, walking down the street like they were headed for a Sunday afternoon picnic, surrounded by other corpses who could not seem to care less.

Yep, either dead or crazy.

John glanced at the man--er, corpse...thing--that held him. He--it--had the same lackluster shuffle that all corpses had (the same one John was trying to emulate in order to “be dead”, but he’d never been much of an actor), although the stride was longer because it was a bloody tall bugger.

_Emphasis on ‘bloody’._ The corpse stopped occasionally to rub more of its fetid blood on John’s arms, and while horrifying, it seemed to keep the other corpses from bothering him (them?). John had thought surely he was dead when it had approached him at Bart’s. He’d barely cared, what with Mary’s lifeless body splayed on the floor beside him. _Do not think about her. Not now._ But when the thing had straddled him and just...looked, John had to take notice.

Its eyes had seemed...inquisitive. And after these years of battle and treatment, he _knew_ corpses. They were not heavy on creative thought, not unless food was involved, and even then, it was clear when you looked in their eyes that no one was home.

This one, though—there was a glimmer of intelligence. And it had completely ignored the option of eating John. It was all very odd. He’d never seen a corpse behave so…human.

Even as he thought it, he scolded himself. They _were_ human. All the rhetoric of the damn crisis had gotten him to the point where even he had started treating them like animals, like objects. This corpse had once lived a life, once been a man with impulses and desires. _He_ deserved to be referred to as such.

Yet _he_ was still dragging John down the streets of Old London. Barely paying attention to where they were going, so focused on breathing, on _being_ , had he been that now as he looked around, John realized they were approaching the city center. Or at least, what used to be the city center before the corpses began to lurk there.

They walked past what he now recognized as Covent Garden. He tried not to gawk (the dead did not care about sightseeing), but it had been years since he had gotten to appreciate London's unique attractions. Most of it was eerily untouched, as if waiting to be occupied once more.

He clenched his fist. _Perhaps. One day._

When the corpse stopped, John was surprised to find them standing in front of The Royal Opera House, its regal splendor as unspoiled as so many of the city’s other landmarks.

Except for the doors, which were locked, bolted, boarded, and chained. Unlike the entrances of so many of the other ransacked buildings, this portal seemed to have held against the undead intruders. The posters around it and along the walls were blood-splattered and torn at the edges, but it was still as clear to John that _Oedipe_ had been premiering before the crisis as it was that no one would be performing it tonight.

His undead kidnapper released his hand and gestured at the building. His face contorted for a moment, revealing a struggle that was at least somewhat physical as he sounded out the words, “Ssssaafe hh-hhere.”

_What did he care?_ No matter what he said, John was not safe outside the Citadel. Particularly not with all these corpses walking around. John made a point to stare as one of them passed by a couple of feet away and then turned back to the dark-coated corpse who has dragged him here and raised his eyebrows. “Uh-huh.” He did his best to convey his skepticism in those two syllables without alerting the other corpses to his still-alive-thank-you-very-much status.

The dead man stared back at him for a moment, then grinned. It wasn’t a full smile, though whether that was due to the limitations of dead flesh or the general temperament of the dead man was unclear. John took a moment to study him. Dark, curly hair that had probably not seen a shower in years--though John admitted he was none too fresh himself. Pale. Almost glowingly white in contrast with the hair and the coat, which hung loose on his thin ( _skeletal?_ ) frame. Sharp cheekbones in an already long, angular face now stretched in an expression to which it was clearly not accustomed.

The grin faded as John stared, the corpse seeming to realize how odd John found him. He seemed oddly self-conscious for a being that, until today, had not been considered capable of conscious thought. John kept these thoughts behind the frame of his own face, however. Displaying fear (or curiosity or grief or any of the things he was actively trying to avoid in this strange milieu) was never helpful, particularly when your audience was still making up its ( _his_ ) mind about eating you.

Said audience took a sharp right turn, backtracking a bit to trail along the very edge of the building. After a moment, John followed, still trying to step haltingly and achieve the same listless posture he saw in the corpses around them.

So consumed was he with his portrayal that he nearly ran into the dead man, who was now crouched beside a low wall and fiddling with a grate embedded into the pavement. Before John could ask what he was doing (which would have been Not Good, considering the various corpses within hearing distance), he had curled his fingers underneath the edge of the grate and lifted it.

And waited.

John looked at him, crouched there beside a gaping chasm in the sidewalk, those light eyes trained upon him expectantly.

_What?_ John mouthed.

He shifted the grate open wider and jerked his head toward it. The implication was clear. _Get in._

_No._ He shook his head slowly at the dead man. _Absolutely not._ He had no clue what was down there.

The man reached out and grabbed his hand once more, tugged him forward a step, then tilted his head, those dark curls bobbing with the motion. The verdigris eyes narrowed to speculative slits. “Daanngerrrous.” And without another word, he turned his back on John and disappeared down the hole, leaving the grate open behind him.

Of course it was dangerous. John was not an idiot. Going underground with a creature that may or may not be saving him as a snack for later was a terrible idea. But that _frisson_ of fear. Of the risk. The unknown. He hadn’t felt this kind of calm exhilaration in the face of death since he was on the frontlines. Was that really something he wanted to experience again?

_Oh god, yes._

The grate clanged shut above him as he followed the corpse into the darkness.

  
***

Ever since he’d foolishly pulled John from the lab at Bart’s, he’d been mentally kicking himself.

_Why am I doing this? John is interesting but alive. This makes no sense. Nothing makes sense anymore. Is he still following me? No, he isn’t. Wait, yes, he is. Why is he?_

Where before there were a few faint deductions floating in the overall emptiness of his mind, now thoughts darted like silver fish, faster than he could ever remember. He still could not catch hold of them for more than a moment, but Lord, did it feel good to _think_ again!

For some reason, John had followed him under the opera house. He was still puzzled as to why, but the query faded from his mind when they reached the theatre. They emerged onstage. He turned and saw John climb from the floor and survey his surroundings. From the inside, the place was not nearly as pristine as its facade. Dust had fallen upon the stage and seats, many rows of which had been removed and fetched up against the various exits. Shattered glass from the chandeliers littered the floor.

It was a haunting sort of place, he supposed, watching John take it all in. Empty and abandoned without warning, like most of London. But it used to contain music. The most glorious music and performances you ever heard, played by professionals on instruments made for just that purpose.

Such spectacles were rare these days. The dead were too hungry to appreciate it, and the living were busy with survival. _Tedious._ He didn’t need to survive, of course, but live music might have made his death more palatable. Though the store of symphony-ready instruments behind the stage went a long way toward appeasing that distaste.

He found the door he needed and opened it, but John was still standing in the middle of the stage, staring around at the faded splendor of the derelict theatre.

He was quite a sight, John. Any man would be dwarfed by the high halls and vast empty expanse of the stage, but his short stature did not make him less. Even in his awe of the place, he stood ramrod straight, hands tucked neatly behind his back, mouth pressed into a committed line of non-expression, even as those dark eyes conveyed his appreciation. This man had seen combat, he was sure. Perhaps it was responsible for every fold and line on his face and every silver strand amongst the blonde on his head. Or maybe it was just age.

He shrugged to himself. Aging was such an ephemeral concept. The living struggled against it, and the dead no longer experienced it. He was the same as he had ever been and ever would be, as far as he knew.

He shook away the vaguely upsetting thought and held the door open wider, clearing his throat to try coherent speech. So far, his attempts had been sub-par at best, and he _hated_ being an amateur. “J-ohhn.” _Getting better._

John’s flinch said differently. He looked toward the door. It seemed he was still harboring some misgivings about following a dead man.

_Understandable, but he’s going to have to get over that._ He suppressed a smirk and gestured to the door. “I-in.”

  
***

The Royal Opera House was familiar to him, though with no memories of his own to connect it to, it was anyone’s guess how he knew it. It only mattered that he did. He was comfortable here. This was his home.

Behind the stage, a maze of narrow halls led to a variety of dressing rooms, prep rooms, rec rooms, storage rooms, and even what appeared to be a gymnasium of some sort. He prodded John into one of the storage rooms and shut the door behind him.

It was a spacious room, dimly lit by the fading daylight as it trickled into the atrium. It was not the most private room, but it was his favorite. While there were a number of couches, chairs, and tables scattered throughout the area, it was not a space amenable to habitation. Every surface was covered in stage memorabilia, instruments, props, set pieces. It was a history of drama in one room.

He spent his time here looking, touching, and holding the theatre curios, as if interacting with them would stir memories of what it was like to have an audience, to be alive.

John cleared his throat, reminding him that he did have an audience and that it was indeed alive. The man squinted around the room, clearly looking for somewhere to rest. He still stood stiffly around him, but it was clear in the bags under his eyes and the slump of his shoulders that he was exhausted. It probably did not help that his newest companion was more dead than alive, but he could hardly help that.

Instead, he hurried around the room, clearing off a few chairs, a couch, and a table, so the weary man could have his options for a rest area.

John cautiously made his way over to a plush chair and sat, not taking his eyes off him the entire time.

The light had faded even more during his cleaning frenzy. He was not worried John would try to escape while he slept because he did not sleep. Corpses were incapable of sleep, as far as he knew, and he barely even needed to rest. He could (and likely would) stand in the doorway all night watching his puzzling new acquisition.

However, this brought up another unforeseen concern. Watching someone as they slept was probably considered rude, if not downright creepy.

With this in mind, he settled in another chair he’d cleared, close enough to keep watch, but far enough to give John his space. The leather creaked under his weight, causing the other man to startle. He realized with a start that John could not see in the dark room. Apparently death came with a few extra vision perks.

“Sorrrry,” he forced out. He was not in the habit of apologizing, nor did he think he had ever been. _Desperate times…_

There was no response. John had not fallen asleep yet, but he did not appear to be in the mood to talk either. Which was fine. He did not remember the last actual conversation he had participated in. Grunts and labored one-word exchanges with Labcoat didn’t count.

John wouldn’t let down his guard, but it didn’t take a genius to see he needed sleep. Maybe he was cold?

He hoisted himself out of the chair, the telltale squeaking announcing his actions to John, who went on alert the moment he stood up. Not that he had ever really relaxed. Now he watched as the man’s eyes strained to follow him in the darkness as he searched the shelves at the edge of the room.

Finding what he was looking for, he approached John, who sat rigid and waiting, and unfolded a large quilt, carefully laying it over him.

The man sat stunned for a moment but seemed willing to accept the offering. Still, it seemed neither of them were going to fall asleep any time soon ( _or ever_ ), and he was growing dangerously close to bored.

Without conscious thought, he wandered over to one of the tables still laden with props and grabbed a violin. He could hardly help that John couldn’t see--and was probably cold? He couldn’t tell--but maybe he could use sound to put them both at ease.

He grabbed the bow off the table and put it to strings. It needed no tuning because, regardless of how empty his mind or elusive his memories, he always found himself coming back and playing. He hardly knew what he played, only that it made everything else fade away.

This time was no different. He knew he was making sound, hopefully music, his fingers plucking and caressing strings in a way that was clearly familiar, yet he just felt at peace.

He heard the other man let out a breath but ignored it, sinking into one of the last things that made him feel alive. He only stopped when he heard John shifting in his chair. He turned to see the man looking right at him, his pupils expanded to take in as much light as possible.

“What _are_ you?” He whispered harshly.

_I am dead._ He flexed his fingers and shrugged, then continued playing.

He played until John’s transport gave out and he finally fell asleep, then played a bit more to accompany him into his dreams.  
Without dreams of his own, it was going to be a long night. He reached into his pocket and grabbed some of the brain he’d saved. He eyed John to make sure he was truly out. Time for a snack.

  
***

_Seven floors below, a man in a suit walked closer and closer to a phone booth. When he reached that destination, he stopped and waited._

_It was a worthwhile detail because his head was currently dead center of her crosshairs. She tilted her head and waited, too, lightly tapping her fingernail against the stock as she watched him._

_Over a minute passed. She was growing impatient, but that was the job. Waiting for the right moment, then taking quick, emotionless action. It was what she was good at. So much so that it had started to get boring._

_Just as she was about to give it up as a bad job, the man was joined by another suited individual. The first man withdrew an envelope from his jacket and handed it to the newcomer._

_Before she could decide if this development warranted further action, the one who had taken the envelope turned and looked straight at her, eyes cutting straight into her soul._

_She jerked back for a moment. No, this was silly. This new man had no idea she was here. She returned her eye to the scope to find him still staring directly at her._

_Not good. Time to take care of it. She exhaled slowly and took aim between the dark eyes._

_“You might want to rethink that, love,” a voice said behind her as a cold metal barrel prodded behind her ear._

_She froze, her attention split between the men below and the gun at her head._

_“Hands off the gun.”_

_She raised one gloved hand, then the other._

_“Good. Stand up. Nice and slow.”_

_The metal against her skin had begun to warm. Its pressure stayed steady as she rose to her feet._

_“Bad luck with your mark today.” The voice had a smile in it as they stood and watched the first man amble away down the street. The man who had been staring was nowhere to be seen._

_She gritted her teeth. “What do you want?”_

_“Just a minute,” the voice stated absently. The gun moved to the base of her neck and she felt the weight behind her shift._

_She ducked and turned, kicking a leg behind her, knocking the intruder off his feet while simultaneously bending to grab the gun from her ankle holster. She pulled it free only to have it knocked away as the man recovered and brought his own gun down on her wrist._

_She grunted and headbutted his face as the gun fell, grimly satisfied to feel bone crunching before a hand gripped her hair and wrenched her away._

_“Oy! Watch it!” He slammed her head against the wall, causing everything to go fuzzy for a moment._

_“Here I am, being nice, making requests, apologizing for interrupting, about to offer you a job, and what thanks do I get?” He knocked her into the wall again, putting a sizable dent in the drywall. Her ears were ringing. “A bum knee and a bloodied nose, that’s what! This better be worth it, boss.”_

_Mary sucked in a surprised breath. She hadn’t realized anyone else was in the room. She tensed as she heard, “Of course she is, Tiger. We wouldn’t be here if she weren’t.” Hands gripped her arms and turned her to face them. A burly, blonde man, clearly the one who’d disarmed her, stood next to a much shorter, dark-haired man--the man from the street._

_She eyed them dazedly, contemplating her options. They’d said something about a job offer? “I already have a job,” she slurred._

_The man from the street grinned at her. “But this is a very special job. Tailor-made for you, even. I’m a big fan of your work, you see.” His dark eyes bored into hers. “I already have Sebby here,” he gestured to the scowling man holding her. “But this job requires a bit more subtlety. I need a kitten, not a tiger.”_

_He drew closer, grabbing her chin in a pale hand, forcing her to look at him. “So what do you say, kitten? Care to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?” He gestured for the other man to let her go and stepped back._

_She nearly fell. Her vision was still swimming in front of her, and it was hard to keep her head up once the man let go. She propped herself against the wall and just looked at them for moment, trying to clear her head and get a grip on the situation. A job. One made special for her. It couldn’t hurt to hear him out. “What did you have in mind?”  
_

  
***

He jerked out of the memory, panting as if he’d been in a fight himself. John still slept soundly, slumped beneath the quilt, unaware that his late fiancee’s secrets were spilling into the head of a man he hardly knew.

Clearly, Mary was a far more interesting person than he had initially judged. _Perhaps more so than John had judged as well._ But he shouldn’t jump to conclusions about whether John knew. After all, Mary had displayed many of her deadly skills in the lab right in front of John’s nose. For all he knew, they were an ex-assassin, crime-fighting duo.

He looked at John again, eyes screwed up in consideration. No, he decided. If his deductions had been correct--and they usually were--John was an extraordinary man, but he was striving to live an ordinary life. Ordinary men did not get engaged to assassins, no matter how fucked up the world had become. John likely knew nothing of his fiancee's past.

Perhaps that was for the best. Besides, he hadn’t confirmed his deductions. What if he’d made a critical mistake? _There’s always something._

The words echoed in his head. His own voice. He hardly remembered what it was like to speak that easily, that _quickly_. John did not seem to be a loquacious sort, yet he’d spoken more today than he himself had in years.

Musing on this communication gap, he watched John sleep until sunlight began to crawl across the ceiling yet again.

  


***


	4. S

_Blasts ripped through the air, shaking the ground beneath his feet. He spotted a body and sprinted across the alley, staying low and yelling over the boom and crash of RPGs. “Murray! Sound off!”_

_The man trembled where he sat propped against a wall but uttered, barely audible, “Here, Captain.” He coughed, sending flecks of blood across his face. His hand grasped at his stomach, which John saw was shredded._

_He swallowed. “Hold on, Murray! I’m going to check the others.” He bunched up a bandage and pressed it into the man’s hand. “Press tight, soldier,” he ordered, then crept along the nearly disintegrated wall to the next room._

_Another body lay outside the door. When he turned this one over, he was greeted by a long, pale face, high cheekbones, dark curls, and blood. So much blood._

_John inhaled sharply and began looking for a wound. The blood had to be coming from somewhere. No wound that he could find. “Report, soldier!” He yelled._

_No response._

_John checked his pulse, but there was none. This man was dead._

_The eyes popped open. An immediately recognizable shade of pale blue. He grinned with blood-covered teeth. “Hello, John,” he said darkly and lunged forward to sink his teeth into John’s shoulder._

 

***

 

John sat forward, gasping violently. His shoulder was throbbing. _Bloody hell._ He needed an aspirin. _Good luck with that, Watson._ Casual pain relief was a thing of the past.

He made to get up, but immediately encountered a body in his way. His gaze trailed up the dark coat and found the same face, the same bloody _cheekbones_ that had featured in his nightmare. He jerked back, finally remembering where he was. _Oh god._

Breathing harshly, he again met those haunting eyes, which were looking at him with thinly veiled curiosity. The man hovered close as he leant in to remove the blanket and then retreated back to the chair across from him.

Sunlight streamed across ceiling full force, informing him that he’d slept late for once. A strip of light painted half of that angular the face, creating an eerie effect as it lit up one eye but failed to shrink the pupil. The pale face, now blessedly free of blood, remained expressionless as he stared.

John stared right back as the full situation continued to bombard him. Bright side: he’d not been killed and eaten in the night. Of course, he was still trapped with a corpse inside a theatre surrounded by more corpses and-- _wait, how did he get the blood off his face?_

It was an absurd thought in the midst of all this, but honestly, this was a corpse who talked, played violin, and kidnapped people before eating them; was it really so odd that he cared enough about his appearance to find a flannel and wipe off occasionally? He himself had discreetly used the blanket to scrub his face, but he still felt grimy and uncomfortable.

The continued staring was not helping. “ _What?_ ”

The man shrugged, but finally averted his eyes. “Fo-ood.” He got up and shuffled toward him.

John’s breath hitched. This was it. The corpse had chilled him overnight and was planning to eat him come morning. He looked wildly around the room for possible weapons, but it was all props, purposely intended not to hurt people.

John hurriedly stood and stepped away from his chair, prepared to fight for his life--and then just watched as the corpse kept walking past him to a door he hadn’t seen in the back of the room.

The dead man gestured to the door. “A-afterrr y-you.”

John raised his eyebrows incredulously and straightened. “Right. ‘Course.” He unclenched his fists and walked through the door--and then was promptly left in darkness as it slammed closed behind him.

 

***

 

He was getting hungry again. _Hateful._ Maybe being around a living human being was having an effect on his appetite.

Shoving the other man backstage would not endear him to John, but it had been necessary. The man had put up with being taken captive, but he suspected having to watch his late fiancee’s brain being eaten in front of him would be the last straw. Last night had been one thing, but leaving the man alone during daylight hours was asking for trouble.

Thus, John had been removed from the equation. Temporarily, of course.

He sat in the chair he’d pulled against the door and retrieved the grey matter, driven partially by hunger but also curiosity. He’d seen a bit of Mary, but what of John? Who were his friends? Were his deductions correct?

No better way to find out than to sneak a peek at the memories of the woman who had claimed to know him best. He took a bite.

 

***

 

John pounded on the door. It wasn’t so bad to get away from Zombie Cheekbones out there, but he was starting to get hungry. He turned around to survey his surroundings as his eyes began to adjust. He was holed up in what appeared to be a dressing room, complete with mirrors and make-up. There was a mini-fridge in the corner, but a quick check showed it had already been ransacked who knows how long ago.

If Tall Dark And Creepy was going to keep him here, for whatever reason, he was going to need to find some food.

His stomach gurgled at the thought. When was the last time he had eaten? He’d stayed up late last night working on Minister Holmes’ recent orders, skipping dinner. He hadn’t had breakfast this morning because he’d been arguing with Mary about--

_Oh god...Mary._

In all the strangeness, he’d let it drift from his mind, and God, he wished it had stayed that way. Things had been a little forced between them, sure. Secrets kept from each other, pasts better left untold. He didn’t even remember the last time they’d slept in the same bed, with all her night watch shifts. He hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye, to fix things.

His knees felt weak. Staggering over to the chair, he slumped down and put his face in his hands. That warm laugh, those chilly hands, her ability to pry a smile out of him even when he was angry. All of it, gone. A mere memory soon forgotten in this horrid world he now lived in.

He looked up to find his solemn visage reflected back at him in the vanity mirror, dry-eyed. Without her, he could still function. He had to. He had been (and still was, in many ways) a soldier. Death was a reality in war, and this world seemed to be nothing more than another battlefield, but Mary had dealt out death, not succumbed to it. She had been one of the good ones. Without her, the Citadel would be that much more vulnerable.

_Oh. Oh no._ Had any of the others made it back? He’d seen Greg and Sally out the window. Even Mike had made it, bless his lab-confined soul. But what about the others?

He turned back to the door and started pounding on it again, shouting, “Oy, Cheekbones! What did you do to my friends?”

 

***

 

_The glow of a candle lit the small table. She looked around, focusing on the door then shifting, blocking out the music (some Spanish tune) in favor of the man in front of her._

_She smiled. He seemed nervous. He thought he hid it well, but she could always tell when he was fibbing. To her, he was an open book. He had something to say._

_He cleared his throat. “Mary...”_

_“John,” she responded teasingly._

_“Don’t--don’t do that, I’m trying to be serious here.” He flashed her a crooked grin. The same one that had made her heart flutter when they’d first met._

_She’d seen this day coming for ages. John was a romantic. They were not sitting in one of the ritzier restaurants in London without reason, and she knew there were few things that would convince John to make these reservations (months in advance) and shake out his old suit (dashing, but a bit tight around the shoulders). He was going to propose._

_She could see in his eyes that he knew she knew. They both burst out laughing._

_“Christ, Mary, just let me do this.”_

_“Oh, by all means, Doctor.” She took a sip of her wine and waited politely._

_“Okay, um...yes. Well.” The man seemed to be at a loss for words all of a sudden. “You...you came into my life at just...just an awful time, really.” He met her gaze. “Your typical sense of timing, as a matter of fact.” He chuckled. “But honestly, without you there, I don’t know where I’d be now.” He paused and took a hearty mouthful of his own wine, giving them both a moment to breathe. “You are honestly one of the best--no, the best thing that could have happened to me. And I want you to know that--”_

_A scream rent the air. She whipped around to look behind them as a waiter came running out of the kitchen, bleeding from somewhere on his neck, if the bloodstained napkin held there were any indication._

_She was standing now, assessing the scene dispassionately. Behind her, John was leaving his seat to approach the wounded server. He put his hands out to console him, saying in a tight voice, “I’m a doctor! It’s okay, I’m a doctor. Let me help you, please!”_

_As he treated the wound, she was looking all around the restaurant. People had started to rise from their seats, a general cloud of panic had descended on the place._

_When the chef staggered out of the kitchen with blood on his face, she was not surprised; she was prepared._

_In one motion, she drew a gun from her bag and shot him in the head._

 

***

 

The pounding on the stage door jolted him back to awareness. “Oy, Cheekbones! What did you do to my friends?”

He unsteepled his hands and sat up, touching his face. _Cheekbones?_

He looked around the stage, at the light trickling in under the theatre doors. He hadn’t been out long. He closed his eyes again, basking in the borrowed memory, the new information he had on John and life before the crisis.

He remembered close to nothing, himself. His previous life when he was, well...alive was a mystery to him. The only clues he had were himself, and even though he was thinking a bit more clearly now, his biggest blind spot was himself.

The pounding interrupted his thoughts yet again. “I know you can hear me, you dead bastard!” More pounding. He was really going to hurt his hand.

He opened the door to an irate John, whose still-raised fist flew straight toward his face, glancing off one of the cheekbones John had made his name.

He reeled for a moment, then gripped the shorter man’s arms, holding them down and away from his face in case another punch was coming. John’s eyes widened as he struggled against the hold but was unable to break free.

_This is not how I wanted this to go._ “C-allllmmm dowwwn.”

John did not calm down. He thrashed even more, yelling some nonsense about how he was an idiot ( _most everyone was_ ) and his friends were probably dead ( _what is it like to have friends?_ ) and he and humanity were probably doomed ( _unlikely_ ).

When the yelling tapered off without John having gotten anywhere--he was stronger than he looked--he caught the short man’s gaze with his own. “F-ffinisshed?”

John shook his head slowly, still staring back at him. “No,” he said, lips barely moving. “I’m trapped in a music hall with the world’s only leftover-saving zombie, I’m maybe probably definitely crazy, and for some reason, I’m _still_ not finished.”

For a panicky moment, he thought John was referring to Mary’s “leftovers” but John had not seen that. The living man was talking about _himself_. He started chuckling.

_Oh, John, you are far too interesting to eat._

 

***

 

The corpse was laughing at him.

It was strange in many ways. John hadn’t ever heard a corpse laugh--or speak, for that matter--and this laugh was a deep, hoarse thing filled with halting breaths and shudders. He appeared quite tickled.

Honestly, it was terrifying.

The fact that it had been in response to John’s fears about his sanity and doomed fate only made it more so, and the frightfully strong grip on his shoulders had not eased a bit. John stood and waited apprehensively as the dead man recovered.

And he did eventually, finally sparing a glance at John and his utter lack of amusement. “N-not eeat.” He removed one of his hands from John’s arm and pointed to his mouth, making a biting motion that would have been comical in any other situation and then shaking his head.

_Oh._ “So you’re not going to eat me. I don’t really see why that’s funny.” His voice sounded a little strained even to his own ears. “So what are you planning to do with me, Mr. Zombie?”

John was far from helpless, of course. He could escape and dispatch this corpse, weapon or no, but that would leave him stranded here, hours away from the Citadel, by his calculation, with thousands of corpses in between. The odds were not in his favor.

The corpse was still staring at him as if he could see through his eyes to the back of his head. It was creepy even without knowing he was dead. “N-not my naame.”

“What, ‘Mr.Zombie’?” He quipped rhetorically. “Yeah, thanks, I figured.” He continued to receive the creepy stare. “So what is it then?”

The dead man finally released him from his gaze as he appeared to be thinking quite hard. His hand rose in a prayer-like position under his chin, and his mouth pursed into several different shapes, but no sound emerged. Finally, he opened his eyes again and looked at him. “Jjj...”

“John? Your name is John? Huh. Well, it is a common name, I guess--” But he broke off as the other man shook his head vehemently. “Umm, okay. Jacob? Jason? James? Jim?”

The dead man appeared to be getting more annoyed with each guess. “Shhh…”

“Only trying to help, mate,” John said, then shut up.

A minute or so passed as the corpse’s eyes darted about the room. He really was a curious specimen. John found himself warming to the concept of an independent study. Why did this corpse talk? Why hadn’t he eaten John?

“Shhh…” the man hissed again.

“Look, I was being quiet, clearly it isn’t helping--”

“Naame i-is Shhh…” he emphasized and then looked pleadingly at John.

“Oh, of course, sorry.” John felt like an idiot. “Do you remember it?” Headshake. Negative. “Should I guess again?”

The dead man gave a one-shouldered shrug but looked relieved at finally being understood. “Okay, Shaun?”

No.

“Sherman?”

No.

“Sheldon? Shannon? Shiloh?”

More head shaking.

John blew out a sigh. “Look, I’m not exactly the foremost expert on baby names, and even if I was, I’ve no idea how old you are. You look about twelve, to be honest.” The corpse frowned at him. “How about I just call you ‘S’?”

The dead man narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, considering.

“Look, it’s something, alright? And with only a letter to go on, at least we’ll know we’re not wrong.”

That seemed to sway him. The newly-dubbed S nodded.

“Well then. Fine. Good.” He cleared his throat and heard S do the same. “Nice to meet you, S. I’m John. John Watson.”

  


***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter today! (Seriously, this chapter seemed so much longer while writing it.)
> 
> I'm currently a couple chapters ahead and will try to post weekly (emphasis on "try"), likely on Saturdays, like today!! Please be patient with me!
> 
> AN: I'm still plotting the end of this, and I think I may need to create a literal timeline. This end-of-the-world business is just the pits to schedule! ;)
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> -MH


	5. Refuge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy, apologies, but my timeline changed...some things, and I inserted a new chapter in my current prewritten stuff. Nothing already posted has changed, but I had to make sure everything after that chapter still jived and...yeah. Here's a new chapter.

Greg Lestrade was in _so much trouble._

The silver-haired man sighed and held his hands up in surrender as the Citadel guards swarmed around their party. Behind him, Sally protested loudly and Mike gave a ghost of a smile. Despite their familiarity around the damn place, they were still being treated as a threat.

Honestly, Greg couldn’t blame them. Normal missions lasted a few hours; their salvage group had been gone for two days. The fact that any of them were still alive at all was a bloody miracle, and clearly it stretched belief that they would be completely healthy and uninfected upon their return.

They gritted their teeth through the retinal scans and blood drawing, and after about an hour of tense waiting outside the gates, they were cleared. As they were finally waved through, a tall guard approached them and put up his visor. “Bloody hell, how did you survive?”

Greg squinted. “Anderson?”

The guard removed his helmet. “In the flesh. Are you three all that’s left?”

“And yourself, you arsehole!” Sally snarled, stepping forward. “What happened to you?”

Anderson shrugged. “Tried to warn you lot at Bart’s, but they came on so quick, it was all I could do to get back here alive.” Sally whirled away and walked ahead, seething.

Greg cringed internally. Anderson was a right berk, but no one deserved the wrath of one, Sally Donovan.

Anderson seemed to be thinking along the same lines, but before he ran off to try to make amends, he turned to Greg once more. “The minister wants to see you, mate. Sounded important.” Then he was gone, leaving Greg with a sour taste in his mouth.

He groaned and turned to Mike, who once again gave a half-hearted smile. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Stamford, er, Mike,” he stumbled over the familiar address. This was John’s friend, not his, but they had both suffered the loss of a friend. “Thank you for your help. I’ve got to, erm, deal with something, but…” Again, he was at a loss. “Just...let me know if you want to talk, okay?”

The other man nodded wearily and headed toward the labs. Greg watched him leave and wondered if he would truly be okay. He himself had repeated experience seeing battle firsthand and lost friends right before his eyes, but he was pretty sure this had been Mike’s first time in the field.

Still, he had bigger fish to fry. Minister Holmes had requested his appearance, and even if he hadn’t, he was the most senior surviving member of the mission, so he had to make a report to Holmes regardless.

No time like the present.

  
***

  
“You asked to see me, minister?”

Ex-Marine Lieutenant Gregory Lestrade stood in the doorway of his office, back ramrod straight and face grimly official.

Mycroft sighed. “At ease, Lestrade. We are not a military operation, nor do I wish us to emulate one.”

Lestrade crossed his arms. “That’s not the impression I got earlier, sir. When you commissioned a unit to complete a mission whose ultimate purpose was unknown to most of its members.” All of this spoken carefully, without inflection.

Mycroft met the other man’s eyes and allowed his lips to give the barest twitch of amusement. “Noted. Now, report, if you please.”

Lestrade complied, detailing their arrival at the hospital and subsequent loss of his lead doctor and most skilled agent--Agent Morstan bitten and Dr. Watson left behind and presumed dead--as well as several of their most promising recruits. Mycroft winced at his mental phrasing. Perhaps things were getting a bit martial around here.

When the other man had finished, he nodded distractedly. The mission had undoubtedly been a dramatic failure, not accomplishing its goal and suffering heavy losses, but he had expected as much. It had been their first foray into the city in months, and every part of Old London was notoriously infected. But he had to try.

“Thank you for your service, Lestrade,” he remarked, with just a touch of irony. “If you could just give me a few more details, I will allow you to get back to your life. Have a seat.” He gestured to the chair across from his desk.

Mycroft thought he might have heard Lestrade mutter, “What life?” as he moved into the room to take the seat, but he did not deem it worth pursuing.

“When you arrived at St. Bartholomew’s, did you see anything out of the ordinary?” He asked blandly.

“You mean, besides the animated corpses and rancid bodies and distinct lack of traffic?”

_Cheeky._ Other than the late Agent Morstan, Mycroft had had little opportunity to form connections with any of the Citadel’s citizens, not did he truly desire to. The few relationships he had chosen to cultivate throughout his life ended with tragedy or bitterness, if not both. Still, Lestrade seemed capable of worthwhile, if not willing conversation. “Indeed.”

“What exactly are you hoping to hear, minister?” Lestrade asked suspiciously. “I relayed everything to you as I saw it. I see no reason to leave anything out, nor do I see any reason to probe deeper _unless,_ ” he took a breath, “I had a hidden agenda.” This time, he returned Mycroft’s gaze, his dark eyes flashing.

Mycroft drew in a quick breath. Lestrade’s anger was intriguing. “Your loyalty is charming, _Gregory_ , but I assure you I hold neither you nor your compatriots any ill will. I want the same things as anyone at the Citadel: the safety of its citizens and the swift destruction of those that might harm them. But I _do_ have a rather personal stake in this, and I am requesting your attention and discretion when I ask, _what did you see?_ ”

Lestrade’s eyes widened minutely, but he recovered with admirable speed. “Well, _Holmes_ ,” he mimicked Mycroft’s informal address, though Mycroft noted he had not resorted to the blatant defiance of using a superior’s given name. “I’m still not sure what you want me to say that I haven’t already. The hospital seemed deserted, but we were ambushed in the labs. Sally, Mike, and I managed to escape.” He paused and corrected himself, “And apparently Anderson, as well.” Mycroft waved him on, fingers steepled beneath his chin. “We followed a few corpses out the window down the fire escape.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “‘Followed a few corpses’, Gregory?” He didn’t know why he continued to use the man’s first name, but the familiarity suited his purposes for the moment.

“I guess that sounds odd, but they act like animals, right?” He shrugged. “Some animals get scared, even of their own kind. Fight or flight. We followed the ones that fled. Not that strange.”

“Hmm, very enlightening. I’m afraid I must make a few Proclamations of Loss. If you note any other absences, do note them in your written report. Thank you, Lestrade.” He gestured at the door tiredly.

“What, not ‘Gregory’ anymore? Gave you what you needed and now I’m cast aside like yesterday’s papers.” He heaved a dramatic sigh.

Mycroft looked up sharply. “That will be all, Lestrade. Enjoy your free time. You are dismissed.”

“Sounds awfully military to me, sir,” Lestrade quipped as he turned to leave. Just as he reached the door, he turned, catching Mycroft’s eye once more. “Next time you need some of my ‘free time’ to ask dodgy questions, no need to break the chain of command, Mycroft.” He grinned at his own impertinence. “You can come find me yourself.” Then he winked and was gone.

Mycroft stared as the door clicked shut, nonplussed. _Did he just wink at me?_

  
***

  
Greg put his hands in his pockets as he drifted down the chilly hall, stopping to listen when Minister Holmes’ voice crackled over the speaker to give a brief catalog of survivors and accolades of the recently deceased.

Henry Knight. Mary Morstan. John Watson. Billy Wiggins. Soo Lin Yao.

Lord, half of them had been in their twenties, barely tasted adulthood before they’d given it all up for the good of mankind. Or rather, partially for the good of mankind and partially for...some other reason. Something _personal_. Holmes had admitted as much, which was strange in and of itself.

Well, when people were dying, personal agendas could go screw themselves. If the minister was hiding something, he was duty-bound to discover what it was and make sure no one else died because of it. How he chose to do it, however, was entirely up to him.

Greg Lestrade, former Lieutenant of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, straightened his back and smirked. A little flirting could go a long way.

  
***

  
_Unconfirmed dead. Confirmed dead. Missing in Action. Confirmed dead. Missing in Action._

Post-mission files weren’t usually this depressing. People were killed, of course. Outside the walls, the odds were quite stacked against them. But half the party? Mycroft shook his head and straightened the folders so Anthea could--

_Right._ His assistant had gone Missing in Action months ago. Silly mistake. He really was slipping.

He could not afford to be making mistakes like these. It had started with losing his brother, he reflected. Sherlock, the last person he had truly cared for, swept away, rendered insensible by the plague that had devoured the country.

Sherlock had been consumed by one of his mysteries at the time, chasing a shadow, a puppetmaster. Mycroft had been aware of it but could not afford to redirect his attention from international affairs. Sherlock was reckless, to be sure, but Mycroft had never imagined that he would lose himself so quickly.

They’d found him at Bart’s, blood on his face, no signs of intelligence behind his eyes. He’d tried to bite Mycroft’s agents, showed no recognition of Anthea or his own brother. Any trace of the criminal he’d been chasing long gone or locked away, inaccessible, in Sherlock’s ruined brain. 

They’d set to work on a cure, but ironically, if anyone had the ability to reverse this horrid condition, it would have been Sherlock himself. Brilliant chemist, successful detective, musical prodigy, endlessly observant. All vanished. Replaced by some...creature Mycroft did not recognize.

He’d barely been able to look at him. Months passed without any change from hunger and hostility. Treatments administered and failed. Mycroft had begun to consider putting him out of his misery-- _surely Sherlock wouldn’t have wanted to live like this_ \--when he’d disappeared.

Mycroft put his head in his hands, lost in the memory. He, Anthea, Scotland Yard, _bloody MI6_ had searched the city, searched the countryside, for the wayward Holmes. Physical searches had yielded nothing. Investigation of the attack was little better. His CCTV feeds of the area had been hijacked that day, and further review of Sherlock’s current case required more people and technological expertise than he’d possessed. He’d been very reliant on Anthea in those days.

His efforts were more and more hindered by the Crisis as it spread. Plans had been in place to preserve critical information, but he needed more than just essentials if he was to unearth his brother and his secrets. He was knee-deep in duplicating trade manifests and personnel documentation when it became clear that this information could be used to protect those left behind rather than continue the search for someone already gone. With a heavy heart, Mycroft had called off the search and used his position and particular skillset to build a safe haven for what was left of London.

It had been necessary. He’d spent the next year applying the information he’d rescued to gather surviving experts, establish a stronghold, install a new survivalist government, and revive less technology-dependant forms of communication. It was during that arduous process that he’d run into Mary Morstan, ex-CIA agent and part-time assassin. His previous combat hires had been military men like Lestrade and Sholto, but the chance to have an intelligence agent--particularly one he could manipulate--was an opportunity he could not pass up.

_“Agent Morstan,” he said, looking at one of his precious files. “Despite recent events, I understand you’ve been quite busy. Your time with the CIA certainly led you on to bigger, if not better things.” He raised an eyebrow at her._

_Mary froze, then shrugged. “Yeah, it’s been a trip.” Her accent had flattened into a distinctly American one. “But desperate times, right? And it seems like you’re probably needing some of that skillset right about now, am I right?” She crossed her legs in her chair and looked at him flatly._

_Impressed, but taking care not to show it, Mycroft closed her file and opened another. “Indeed, the Citadel could use someone with your particular talents. I do have a few inquiries unrelated to those duties, however. If you’ll indulge me, I can assure you no one but the two of us will know you ever did anything untoward.”_

_Mary scoffed. “Anything for...what did you call it? The Citadel?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Yeah, anything for that. Ask your questions.”_

_“Are you familiar with the name Sherlock Holmes?” He’d always ask. He couldn’t stop himself._

_“Nope. Not an inkling. Some kinda family?” She asked, noticing the obvious shared name._

_“No relation,” he replied smoothly. “What about James Moriarty?” The search for his brother may have been off, but he’d still managed to lift a few names from the files. He would use the intelligence at his disposal to solve his brother’s final mystery, and Sherlock had hardly been the only observant one in their family._

_To that end, he noted with interest that Mary’s eyes had flicked to the side before she lowered her head. Possible evidence of deception. Too soon to tell._

_“He’s dead,” Mary answered at length. “We had a...disagreement, and I had to, er, take care of him,” she said carefully. When she finally lifted her head, her gaze was cold and steady. “He wasn’t a nice man, Mr. Holmes. You know I’ve killed a lot of people, but I definitely don’t regret killing him. Besides, if I hadn’t, I suspect I wouldn’t be here today.”_

_“Well, this opens a few other inquiries,” Mycroft responded without batting an eye. “Did you also know of former Colonel Sebastian Moran?”_

_“Yes,” she said, much more quickly this time. “He was bitten during the Crisis. Put him down myself.”_

_She sounded rather proud of this, but Mycroft was ready to move on. “Irene Adler and Molly Hooper.”_

_“Heard of Adler, but never met her. Never heard of the other one.” She paused, waiting for more, but Mycroft had steepled his fingers on his desk, gazing at her over them thoughtfully. “Are we done here?”_

_“Oh, this is only the beginning, Agent Morstan.” He smiled._

He still suspected Morstan had been withholding information, but asking for more might have upset the careful balance he had struck. He’d been lucky enough to have not only a competent field agent capable of gathering intelligence but also her rather impressive fiance, whose medical expertise and war zone experience had made him a valuable member of The Citadel. 

And now he’d lost them both in a single mission. A mission loosely rationalized as contributing to development of countermeasures but solidly based on his desire to search St. Bart’s for his long lost brother.

He barely had an idea of what he would do if he found him. Restrain him? Kill him? Have Watson (or rather Stamford, now) run tests on him?

His brother’s mindless state had to end, one way or another. As sentimental and pointless as it was, Mycroft had discovered there was nothing he wouldn’t do to accomplish that goal. But he was running out of options and--yet again--people. He’d tried all of Sherlock’s old haunts, but the man had been in love with all of London.

_Again, sentiment._

His brother was in the city somewhere. He just had to keep looking.

  


***


	6. Textual Healing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boom. Two chapters at once. Doesn't make up for the last three weeks, but... Here. Take it. *runs*

“I’m John. John Watson.”

S looked down at the hand John held out. They’d held hands numerous times in the hours ( _had it only been hours?_ ) since they’d met, but this was the first time John had _offered_. That had to mean _something_. He grasped the hand and gave a firm shake, practicing a smile that wouldn’t make John look scared of him.

It was having mixed success, but suddenly S was in his mind, reviewing the deductions he’d made at the lab. He had a last name now: Watson. It was probably embossed on the tags around his neck--if they _were_ tags, and he was fairly certain they were. They would declare that he was a doctor. A surgeon, judging by the callouses. A surgeon in the military? RAMC, then. Stationed somewhere sunny...

He still could not confirm his conclusions, and his communication skills were as inept as ever. He might be able to write, but he couldn’t exactly remember. His body, the long-dead transport for his apathetic consciousness, remembered more than his brain did. He’d often find himself performing detailed tasks without really knowing why--dancing, playing the violin, picking locks. 

As far as he could tell, it was muscle memory. These must have been things he had been accustomed to doing when he was alive, but put together, the diverse array of behaviors made for a rather strange portrait of whom he’d once been. The fact that he did not find himself writing things without thinking about it would seem to indicate it was not on the short list of everyday activities in his past life. Besides, he preferred to text.

_I prefer to text._

S froze. He had said that. _When? Why?_ What did it mean?

He felt a tug on his hand and jolted back to real time. He was still holding John’s hand.

“You okay, there, S?” John asked tentatively as he extricated his hand. “You kinda zoned out there for a sec.”

S nodded and tried to collect his thoughts. I prefer to text. He looked at John searchingly. “Ph-one?”

The smaller man shrugged. “Don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, S, but we’re kind of in a zombie apocalypse. My phone won’t connect to anything. Don’t you think I would have tried that otherwise?”

So he did have a phone. He didn’t need to connect to anyone--just John. S rolled his eyes and held out his hand. “Pho-one,” he insisted.

John stared at him for a moment then shrugged. “Yeah, alright. Here.” He reached into the pocket of his scuffed bomber jacket and pulled out an equally scuffed mobile. “Doesn’t do much of anything, but knock yourself out.”

S took the device and flipped it around in his hands, his mind whirling. It was an old model but still new enough to have smartphone capabilities.The engraving on the back read, _“Harry Watson - From Clara xxx”_. There were numerous scratches around the charging port. Otherwise, still decently maintained. When he pushed the button, it lit up. Still kept charged. For music perhaps? A quick search showed no audio files. Sentimental then. No signal, no bars. So far so obvious.

He opened up the messenger app and began to type, the action as natural to him as breathing had once been. Time to test those deductions.

  
***

  
John watched in amazement as S played with his phone. It was stupid, but now that he knew the dead man was not planning on eating him, he was starting to feel a kinship with him. It was possibly the most basic premise for a friendship that had ever existed, but that didn’t make it any less real.

Besides, a corpse that spoke and laughed and _played violin_ was an actual marvel. All he’d ever seen them accomplish was based solely on instinct, primal urges that the body and mind worked in heedless concert to satisfy. To have one reject the concept of killing and eating him in favor of _asking to borrow his phone_ bordered on the absurd.

He was almost taken aback when the phone was returned to him. The message app was open and few words had appeared beside the flashing cursor. “Did you just try to text?” He asked in disbelief.

S nodded and pointed to the screen again. John dutifully looked again and actually read the text.

**Afghanistan or Iraq?**

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” John read aloud. “What does that mean?”

S groaned (a far more normal sound for a corpse, in John’s opinion) and pointed at him. “You...ssoldier.” He stopped and waited.

“Yes, I--wait, hang on, how did you know that?”

S shook his head. “Nnot knowww. D-deduced.”

“Deduced?” S nodded. John eyed him suspiciously. “Let’s assume I believe that. How exactly did you _deduce_ that I had been a soldier?” He crossed his arms and waited.

S did not disappoint. Beckoning for the phone once more, he took it and quickly began typing more on the small, dusty screen.

When he handed it back, John was amazed at the sheer number of words he had managed to enter on the screen. For a man who couldn’t seem to string more than a few words together without running out of breath, S typed unbelievably fast. When John actually read the words, however…

**Your posture: straight, eyes front, hands clasped behind back. Your hair: military-short and simple. Your necklace: ball chain, the kind used for dog tags. Your tan: only below the wrist. Abroad but not sunbathing. Stationed somewhere sunny.**

And then at the bottom, the same brusque query as before: **Afghanistan or Iraq?**

He read it twice, just to be sure, then looked up at the undead enigma before him. Those pale eyes were focused on him. He seemed apprehensive, as if he both welcomed and dreaded John’s response.

“That’s brilliant.” John blurted before he could stop himself.

“Wh--” S stepped back and cleared his throat, eyebrows crinkled. “Wha-at?”

“That’s brilliant,” John repeated. In the first few months after the establishment of the Citadel, he’d still been focused on a cure. He’d interacted with corpses everyday and never seen evidence of higher cognitive function. And yet this corpse had just made leaps of thought even John had trouble following.

S recovered from his surprise and stepped forward again, his mouth doing something complicated that might have been an attempt at a smile. After a moment, he pointed at the phone again.

John looked at it dumbly. Oh. He’d still not answered the question. “Afghanistan.” He put up a hand to stop the dead man from responding. “And yes, that was all quite correct. What else can you tell about me just from looking?” He handed the phone back.

As S tapped on the phone, his eyes flicking between John and the screen, John pondered on the concept of communication and intelligence. It was often true that those gifted with high levels of intelligence had trouble making themselves understood, but this was quite an extreme case. _Lord, if he’s this smart now, what had he been like when he was alive?_ Certified genius, he’d bet. John regretted not having learned some sort of sign language simply for the purpose of using it to communicate with S in a less stilted manner.

S returned the phone, full of yet more deductions about how his behavior in the lab made it clear he was a doctor, the engraving on his phone spoke of his limp after the war, and the scratched charging port indicated a drinking problem in his family.

“Fantastic,” he said, but now that the thought of what S had been like as a living, breathing human had intruded, he couldn’t get it out of his head.

“S,” he asked, choosing his words carefully, “do you remember anything about who you used to be, you know…before?”

S shook his head. He opened his mouth, but then seemed to think better of it and gestured for the phone again.

Ah, yes. John handed the phone back to the man. “You should just keep this. You’re clearly going to get more use out of it than I can.”

S shook his head at him as he typed, murmuring, “Y-ours,” and immediately gave it back.

**Murder.**

Well, that wasn’t promising. “I’m not sure…” he trailed off, trying to decide how to interpret that. “You mean you were a murderer? Or were you killed, maybe? Or…” He searched for other meanings, but S just shrugged at him again.

“Just ‘murder’? No other clues?” Another head shake.

John just hoped S was not a murderer. He’d said he wouldn’t eat him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t plan to kill him as he acted out the behaviors of his past life. Playing violin, texting, killing people, all in a day’s work for your average psychopathic genius.

“Right,” he said, changing the subject. “What about food? Got any around here?” He asked hopefully. S shrugged.

“D’you know you do that a lot?” John asked and chuckled when all he received was another shrug. “Okay, okay. Here’s the thing, though: I don’t eat brains, but I am hungry. We have got to find me some food.”

He squared up and faced the door to the bowels of the theater. “Let’s have a tour then, shall we?”

  
***

  
S stared at John as they wandered through the theater.

Ever since he’d made it clear that he was not going to eat him, John had been almost exuberant in his interactions with him. It felt…good. Like having a friend.

Every time John said the word ‘we’ in reference to the two of them, he got an odd sensation in his chest. Almost as if his heart was beating, and beating fast. Absurd, of course. He’d never known any dead with functioning hearts, and everything John had been saying about his research only confirmed that. Dead was dead.

_But how?_ He wondered as they peeked into another dressing room.

John had asked if the one thing he remembered from his past was the method of his demise. Had he been murdered? He didn’t know. And he hated not knowing. He needed evidence.

John was rifling through a stack of clothes laid upon a chair in the corner. The man was bound and determined to find something of use in this theater. His first priority seemed to be food, but so far, they’d looked in several storerooms and dressing rooms and found nothing.

The concession stand in the atrium would be the best option if the huge glass panes that had once made up the walls of the atrium had not been shattered some years ago. The stand could still contain nonperishable food, but it was out in the open, exposed to wanderers, living and dead alike. Dangerous for them both, but especially for John.

Instead, the erstwhile doctor had collected several articles of clothing, citing his own soiled shirt and jacket as the reason for his ‘shopping’. S looked down at his own filthy button down and trousers and shrugged.

John noticed what he was looking at and shuddered. “Lord, those clothes haven’t seen a washer in years. You’ve got all kinds of things to wear in here.” He held up a brocade tunic that looked to be roughly S’s size. S winced at the awful garment, eliciting another low chuckle from John. ”You’re telling me you’ve never bothered to try any of them?”

He shook his head and shrugged. He’d worn this ensemble for years and it hadn’t mattered in the slightest. Besides, he knew for certain that anyone who tried to take this coat from him would have a fight on their hands. It was as much a part of him as his inoperational heart and his sluggish brain.

Though at least he could remedy the second--temporarily, of course. He slowed as John approached the next room. Just a nibble…

***

_“Where are you going?”_

_Mary turned around and faced her fiance. John’s face was wrinkled in frustration. “I barely get to see you anymore, and we’re engaged. That’s got to mean something. Things are tough right now with…everything that’s happening…”_

_Mary snorted. John had a gift for understatement._

_He was still undeterred. “The attacks are getting more frequent, and we’re all working as hard as we can to figure out what’s happening. The timing really couldn’t be worse--”_

_Mary’s phone buzzed on the table, effectively cutting off the discussion. Holding John’s gaze defiantly, she answered it._

_“Your services are required in Leeds, Kitten.” Jim’s voice purred across the line._

_She turned her back on John, walking to their room to fetch her things. “How many?” She replied, all business as she tossed a change of clothes on top of the gun waiting in her bag._

_“Three. Better results this time, but still not quite the effects we’re looking for, right, Tiger?” His voice faded as he clearly turned to ask the other man. A sinister chuckle echoed in the background of the call, followed by a playful growl. Mary rolled her eyes._

_“Get out of bed and pay attention, you sap!” Mary snapped._

_“Ah-ah, Kitten, jealousy doesn’t suit you. Now go take care of those loose ends before this mess spreads. Sebby says it might be contagious this time, so you’ll want to hurry.”_

_“Lovely,” she said sardonically. “How far along are they?”_

_A deep voice murmured something indistinct in the background and Jim giggled. “Well, Sebby says they could still think, but they got a little rowdy. Poor thing, are you okay?” More rumbling and giggling._

_John appeared in the doorway. Mary glanced at him and mimed Jim’s blathering with her hand, thankful she’d thought to pre-pack her gun._

_“Mmm, anyway, this batch left a bit too much thinking room for our pesky detective. The next one should fix that. I’ll have Sebby drop it off when you’re finished, and you can test it nearby. No witnesses, Kitten! Toodaloo!” He sang before he ringing off._

_Mary cursed and tossed the phone into the bag, then turned to face John. ___

_“I know, I know,” he said, holding his hands up when she moved to pass by him, “you’ve got lives to save--” Mary grimaced “--but we need to talk about this,” he pleaded. “I’m trying to cure this thing, and you’re tracking down the newly infected, and it’s just a lot to deal with right now. To add planning a wedding to that is going to be a strain on us...” He trailed off._

_Mary waited for him to add more, but there was nothing. She scoffed. “Typical!” She shouldered the bag and shoved past him._

_John followed. “Look, when this is over--”_

_She whirled on him, speaking quickly. “It’s never going to be over, John. You said it yourself, the attacks are only getting more frequent. Your team is getting nowhere. I have to clean up corpses every week. I don’t want to spend all our time together waiting for things to get better.” She set down her bag and cradled his face in her hands. “If not now, when?”_

_John didn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know.”_

  
***

  
S shook himself and patted his pocket, roughly half the brain still left for later. It was now quite clear that John hadn’t known about his fiancee’s activities. And now he had a name, _Jim_ , that he tucked away for later attempts at thought. Pity he couldn’t control the memories he saw to find out more or he would have told ( _texted_ ) John his theories already.

Meanwhile, John had continued into the next room. Open cabinets and doors told S he had found nothing edible and certainly nothing (in S’s elevated opinion) wearable. John, however, had apparently not been of the same opinion, as he was now toting a few pairs of trousers and a particularly hideous jumper, looking pleased at his new acquisitions as he walked out of the room.

S snickered and followed him to the next room over. He knew this place better than any other, but John appeared to be having a good time pioneering their journey, so he lagged behind, a dim, dead shadow of John’s bright determination.

They stepped inside a dance studio intended for The Royal Ballet. Other than the storage room they’d slept in (well, _John_ had slept in), this was the place in which S spent the most time. By some miracle, the mirrored walls remained intact; the fingerprints streaking the glass belonged to either London’s finest ballerinas or himself.

He liked to come in here and play the violin, and then once the music had seeped into his mind, he would put the instrument down and dance, swaying and bowing the way ballerinos had for decades in this very room.

John looked rather put out at seeing the mostly empty room. With only polished boards and rails reflected endlessly against the walls, it was clear there was not going to be any food in here. Although…

S walked to the opposite side of the room, where a small door led to a corner closet. Since most professional dancers were ruthlessly pushed to keep a strict diet and workout regimen, they might hide snacks nearby to tide them over before or after performances. This small closet might hold the key to John’s future happiness.

“D’you think something’s in there?” John’s voice came from directly behind him as he grasped the doorknob.

He jerked his hand away, his chest doing the odd pulsating thing again, but recovered enough to shrug and resume opening the closet.

Inside, there were a number of helpful and unhelpful things: napkins, towels, toe blocks, ribbons, leotards, and sundry bits of refuse. A few candy and protein bar wrappers declared that he had been right in his deductions about this being a snack cache, but they were far too late to take advantage. However, another commodity appeared to be stocked quite well.

“Beer?” John said incredulously. He reached in and grabbed a bottle. “Seriously?”

S smiled at John’s disbelief. Even the daintiest ballerina had her vices, and S knew well that the men and women who danced upon this stage were anything but fragile.

He helped John grab a few of the bottles, taking care not to drop any on the way back to the storage room, and then John opened a beer and took a long swig.

“Bit warm, but who’s complaining?” He took another sip. “I haven’t had a beer in ages.” He settled back in the plush red chair that S had already come to think of as his, then belatedly offered the bottle to him. “Sorry, did you want one?”

S smiled and shook his head. He was not used to smiling this much. But then, he was not used to having a companion, much less one that talked and asked him questions and seemed genuinely interested in him.

John had even started forming his questions so that they could be answered with a nod or shake of the head, and while he appreciated it, he knew that further action would need to be taken to ensure that John stayed. He needed to find him food, for one. Being able to actually speak with him would be nice as well. Something to work on.

Meanwhile, John seemed more interested in _his_ hunger. “You know, in all of our previous studies, we never found a corpse with this much higher brain function. All of that and you don’t eat brains? What are the chances? Maybe the two are linked!”

He seemed excited by the prospect. S’s mouth went dry. He shook his head guiltily, cutting off his excited patter. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

It was not a yes or no question, and this was not something he wanted to try to speak nor put into text. Instead, he let John’s question hang there between them until the other man picked it up again, his brow wrinkled in thought. “So...you _do_ eat humans?” He said carefully. S nodded. “Just not me?”

He shook his head rapidly. He could never eat John. _I would gladly die of hunger before eating you._ The thought startled him, not the least because he knew it was entirely true. He had never cared much for his own survival, and the hunger was the only thing that drove him to maintain his existence. Now, he had to protect John.

John seemed gratified by this answer but sincerely confused. “I won’t ask why because I’m betting I’ll get another shrug, but that makes sense. All of the specimens we denied nourishment or fed with alternate food sources went catatonic. The ones that maintained their…normal diets…well, they weren’t like you, that’s for sure.” He propped his chin on his hand and gazed at him. “What is it that makes you different, S?”

It was clearly a rhetorical question, but he shrugged anyway. John sipped his beer with a considering expression. “So you remember nothing about your past life? You’ve been living here...since the crisis started? A few years?”

He nodded, then remembered his earlier determination to practice speaking. “Y-es.” Good, but more. He needed to push himself. “Three y-ears.”

John’s gaze sharpened. “Three? How do you know?”

S pointed to a far wall. “Counting.”

  


***


	7. Dinner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! You get a chapter, and I'm totally still alive! Happy late 2017, ya crazies! (And happy early Valentine's Day for those of you who know for certain that you're not in love with a zombie.)
> 
> Keep it up with the comments--every time I get one of those, I'm inspired anew to keep writing. (Seriously, you guys are the best f***ing motivation.) Lmk if you've got ideas (everytime I watch WB I think of something new, and it's all getting tangled up in my head!) because I love to hear what you guys care about and what's working.

“Counting.”

John turned and looked where S was pointing. Along the wall, partially obscured by a shelf that was near bursting with what appeared to be accordion parts were a series of small scratches.

He finished his beer, setting it carefully beside the chair for later--who knew when a broken bottle might come in handy, especially when his only company was Mr. All-I-Remember-Is-Murder--and got up to investigate.

_Holy shit._

Behind the ridiculous shelf were rows upon rows of tally marks, spanning a meter or so. S had apparently been assiduously marking the days as they passed. He looked back to at the fascinating, possibly dangerous corpse, who seemed to think nothing of this odd behavior. “When did you start this?”

S shrugged. “S-ince I can r-remember.”

It was the longest sentence John had heard him utter. He even looked rather pleased with himself. But for a seemingly simple answer, it brought up some worrisome concerns. The crisis had started nearly five years ago, so S had been a survivor then. The tallies clearly marked days passed, hundreds of them.

In John’s studies, he had observed and discovered a number of things, but there had been no way to determine when a corpse had “turned”. Normal aging was effectively stopped, blood flow was stymied, any damage sustained by the body was considered superficial unless it destroyed the brain. 

Did that mean S had begun occupying this place immediately after he’d been ‘turned’ or was there a period of time between his turning and his consciousness? How long?

His stomach rumbled, interrupting his thought process. S’s head tilted at the sound. “Hungry?”

That word, John noted sourly, seemed to come out clear as a bell.

He put a hand to his stomach, an aborted attempt to stifle the sound. “No--I mean, yes, of course, but--” _But I’m not sure I trust your idea of food._ Still, without S, he’d never have found the beer. Besides, without the watchful corpse around, he might actually be able to get some things figured out.

S held his gaze, waiting.

He took a breath. “Y’know, yeah. I am quite hungry. You wouldn’t happen to have a secret cache of rations around here, would you?” He asked, knowing perfectly well he didn’t. S seemed not to think much of the question either, narrowing his eyes at John and not responding to the ridiculous query. John chuckled weakly. “Yeah, thought not. I’m going to need to eat soon, though. D’you think you could find me something to eat?”

At this, S nodded earnestly and turned to leave. John relaxed, but tensed when he heard the other man turn back. When he looked up, it was to the singular sight of S giving him two thumbs-up. John swallowed a smile and waved him on.

Once the door finally closed, John got to his feet and began planning. It was time to take control of his own destiny.

  
***

  
John was up to something.

Difficult to say what at present. He had the feeling he was still working at a mere fraction of his full mental capacity. He would check the concession area within the atrium or, failing that, this was downtown London; there were a number of eateries within walking distance. Surely the kitchen of one of those fine establishments still contained _something_ edible.

It was a mission of paltry difficulty, made no more challenging by his general lack of appetite for what John and most humans considered to be edible. After all, he knew what food looked like--it just no longer held any interest to him. Still, it was something to do, and if John needed space, he would do well to give it to him. Besides, he could use the time to satisfy the last vestiges of his own hunger as well.

***

_“Last chance, Jim,” she muttered into the mic. “You sure this is the right batch?”_

_“Don’t be coy, Kitten,” the manic criminal replied giddily. ”You know you’re just as excited as I am.”_

_Untrue. Just because loony Jim had this unhealthy obsession with some detective bloke and Sebastian was willing to indulge it didn’t mean she had to jump on their crazy train. This was just a job. People to be silenced. Problems to be eliminated._

_“Mm-hm,” she hummed noncommittally, peering through the scope of her modified rifle at the hospital window. Do labs normally have windows?_

_Jim cackled into her earpiece. “Well, it may not be perfect, but Daddy’s getting impatient, and he’s getting too close.”_

_A dark-curled head bobbed into view in front of the window. “Target acquired.”_

_“Take the shot.”_

_Mary pulled the trigger and watched the glass shatter. The cannister released its toxic contents instantly. She smirked as the dark-coated figure disappeared from sight._

_“Go get ‘em, Tiger,” she murmured, watching Moran walk casually through the front doors._

_“Vigilance, my dear,” Jim reminded, barely contained glee in his voice. “Mustn’t celebrate early and ruin the party.”_

_She sighed and refocused on the building, glimpsing Moran through another window, gas mask secured to his face. The canister was small-time, 10-meter radius. Not much danger or even collateral damage. Shouldn’t take long for Sebastian to confirm._

_Sure enough, his bulky frame appeared outside the doors yet again, but something was wrong. His gas mask still appeared secure, but he was clutching his arm._

_Blood. Moran’s arm had sustained a deep, jagged wound right at the crook of his elbow. She hissed between her teeth. He was lucky he hadn’t bled out already in an area like that. But it didn’t seem to be bleeding heavily…_

_“Morstan, report!” Jim’s voice sounded slightly panicked in her earpiece. All he could see was what the CCTV feed showed, and clearly he wasn’t satisfied with that information._

_Mary squinted, refocusing her sight just as Sebastian whipped off the mask to stare directly at her. She jerked back from the gun. Moran’s eyes, pale blue as ever with pupils shrunk to pinpoints, showed none of the ruthless intelligence she was used to seeing there. Even as she watched, he grew unconcerned by his wound and begin staggering down the street, behaving in a manner that had become eerily familiar to her over the past year._

_Sebastian Moran was gone._

_“He’s...infected, sir.” Mary confessed haltingly over the mic._

_“What?” Jim squawked. “He can’t have been, he was wearing a mask!”_

_“Yes, sir,” she confirmed, keeping him carefully centered in her sight. “I don’t think he inhaled it, but--”_

_“Bring him in,” Jim interrupted, “I’m sure it’s just partial exposure. We’ll treat him at the labs. Surely we can synthesize something…”_

_Jim’s voice grew fainter as the blood pounded in her ears. For all his cleverness, Moriarty had put no efforts into finding a cure. The process would take months, years. It would be messy._

_This would be much cleaner._

_“Sorry, Jim,” Mary spoke, cold and clear, as she found Moran’s head at the center of her crosshairs and pulled the trigger. “Just doing my job.”_

  
***

  
The more he learned about Mary the more he was simultaneously impressed and upset with her. 

Shaken, S turned his face to the sky. A rare flash of sense-memory reminded him that he had once blown smoke into the sky over the city just like this, mulling over his problems, his place in it all. The flash of remembrance quickly faded, but he smiled nonetheless. He may be dead now, but he was doing the same sorts of things he’d done when he was alive. And apparently he’d managed to kick his smoking habit.

Raising his nose to the wind, he allowed the scents of the city, overrun with gunpowder, death, and decay, to permeate his senses. His city had fallen, but whatever her fate, S would always belong in London.

His nostrils flared. There was a hint of...something...on the wind. Around him, corpses continued to shamble about, unconcerned by his presence. He was, after all, still dead. For all his medical training and research, John could do nothing to change that.

He shook himself. _Don’t get distracted._ He still needed to find dinner. It was a matter of minutes to dart into a few of the restaurants on the block. The third one yielded a few tins of beans. S smirked and slid the rations into his capacious pockets.

He’d stepped back through the shattered glass of the restaurant’s door, ready to return home, when the wind brought him a hint of the smell from before. It was human and...oddly familiar.

_John._

If he could catch John’s scent, then so could the others. Around him, he noticed more dead starting to gain interest, staggering away from him toward the enticing scent. Feeling rather animalistic, he raised his head and inhaled deeply, getting a lungful of the unique scent. Taking another long breath, he began to follow the trail as well. He had to get to John first. Faster. _Faster._ His legs, still unused to the quick, coordinated motion of running, strained and crackled in effort, the heavy cans in his coat swayed and bumped against his knees as he gained speed, his nose in the air.

The faster he ran, the more attention he attracted. Even if none of the others could catch him, every step of his sprint was making John (and him) a target. Why was John outside?

His run took him weaving back through the buildings and overturned bins behind the theater until he emerged in the open atrium. A growing mass of the dead surrounded the ticket booth, but other than the shuffling of dead feet and the occasional groan, it was eerily quiet.

John’s scent was stronger than ever though, and he was beginning to smell of fear.

S dashed into the melee without a second thought, passing through the wall of dead with relative ease. There was a small space surrounding the booth, and as S watched, the closed shutters of the box’s window cracked open and revealed a sliver of sandy hair.

He edged in closer to the opening and was forced to duck when a small, strong arm lashed out, the end of a broken beer bottle clenched in its hand, then withdrew just as quickly. He smiled. _Clever John._

“Johhhnnn,” he moaned, trying not to stand out or draw any more attention to himself than he already had. He was surprised to find that he had to deliberately make himself sound stilted and guttural. Apparently John had helped him. Too bad he was unlikely to get an opportunity to thank him.

  
***

  
John had no intention of letting S control his life. He’d already been forced to march out here, in the middle of the dead zone of the city, to spend his time with a corpse--a fascinating corpse who showed extraordinary capabilities in music and deductive thought and who texted faster than John himself could type, but still a corpse. A dead man. It was time for the living to get going.

Grabbing the beer bottle from its spot beside the armchair, he peeked out the door to ascertain that S had indeed gone, then made his way out of the theater.

John fully intended to find his way back to the Citadel. He’d check to make sure his friends were okay. God, he’d even pulled poor Mike from his data analysis to join their medical salvage, and now he’d no idea if the cheerful man was even alive. The further he got from the room where he’d listened to the thoughtless beauty of S’s violin, the clearer his goal became. Get out. Return to the Citadel. Try to forget there was such a thing as a talking, texting, violin-playing corpse. Simple.

Of course, it was never that simple. Once he got outside, corpses had slowly amassed. _I smell like dinner_ , he realized belatedly. He hadn’t understood at the time why S had smeared blood and God-knows-what all over his face, but now he marveled at the dead man’s forethought. It shook him to know that S had been protecting him since the moment they met.

_Since the moment he_ kidnapped _me_ , he reminded himself grimly, turning back toward the theatre.

He no longer had a gun. Just a damn beer bottle.

_Wouldn’t even have that without him._

This was not the time to have a moral crisis. Besides, he wouldn’t even _be_ in this situation if it weren’t for S. _Take_ that _, conscience!_

He waited like a madman for that little voice in his head to pipe up, but it remained silent, and John again wondered if he was going insane. Pursued by zombies, hearing voices, befriending corpses, and here he was standing on the bloody sidewalk trying to decide if he liked it or not.

_Move!_ The voice practically shouted, and he realized in his dithering that he had allowed the gap between him and relatively certain death to close. These weren’t friendly coat-wearing genius zombies, and he would do well to remember that.

Still, his options had narrowed to one. He _had_ to go back into the theatre. He ceased his ridiculous oscillation on the pavement and sprang into a full-on sprint.

John’s legs may not have been as long as His-Dead-Nibs, but he was no slouch when it came to speed. His body still remembered hauling heavy packs and injured soldiers, triaging on the run. Thrilling zombie chases were just a warm-up.

_Admit it, you’re enjoying this._

It was hard to argue with himself as the blood sang in his veins. The ticket stand loomed ahead of him, lit by streams of sunlight like a beacon of safety. _Just a few more yards._ He clenched the glass bottle so hard he half-feared it might shatter--and then where would he be? Bloody, lacerated hands were unlikely to improve this situation--and dove through the open receiving window.

Moving as quickly as possible, he turned and slammed the shutter doors closed, pulling the latch closed just as corpses began to claw at its hinges. The door creaked and shuddered with each push and tug, but it was holding. For now.

Satisfied that he had a minute or so to gather himself, John turned and assessed the interior of the booth. Scraps of ticket paper and little else. _Damn._ He still had the bottle, though. He took careful aim and then sheared off the bottom, leaving jagged glass. _Better than nothing._

The shutters rattled and shook, the simple locking mechanism not meant to withstand such an onslaught.

Well, he’d meant to take control of his own fate. _No time like the present._ He gritted his teeth and unlatched the door, lashing out at the nearest moving object.

He slammed the doors shut and relocked them. Good God, there were a lot of corpses out there. The quick glance he’d gotten was...discouraging. Thirty, maybe forty of them, gathered around his little refuge. _Not good._

Amidst his contemplation, John’s ears pricked to the rising noise outside. Grunts and groans and thumps against the wall and shutters. Standard fare for a raid. Only this time he didn’t have a raiding party. Or a gun. He’d be cursing the loss of his gun for the rest of his life, it seemed.

_Although that might not be very long._

Why had he thought this was a good a idea? In hindsight, one slightly eccentric corpse with inscrutable intentions was a vast improvement over the gathering horde which definitely meant to kill him. However, without opening the shutters again, he had no way of counting corpses and calculating his odds. _Probably for the best_ , he thought with a grim smile. _Never tell me the odds._

He straightened, faith in his own abilities bolstered for now. He was a soldier. He had always been prepared to die fighting. The broken bottle clenched firmly in his fist, he moved to open the shutters again.

“Muuuurderrrr…”

John paused. _What?_

  
***

  
_Boneys._

In his solitary existence, he tried not to think about the horrid things. But with John around, S found himself thinking a lot more, and now he cursed his willing ignorance.

The idea had come to him far too slowly really. He had disguised John as a corpse to protect him when they first met. The same strategy would ( _hopefully_ ) work again, but in order for him to reach John, it would have to work on S. He’d have to resemble something even corpses feared, and the only thing that frightened the dead were those even more dead than them: boneys.

Everyone knew boneys--those walking skeletons whose ghastly presence even the dead feared--preferred the darkness and ate almost anything, but S had had the dubious pleasure of seeing the creation of one of the horrible things up close. He’d noticed that when a corpse was about to go boney, they withdrew to a dark corner and started picking at their faces. Luckily for John and his poorly-armed last stand, S had always had an unhealthy sense of self-preservation, so one day, he’d stayed and watched. He’d have found it a fascinating and vaguely sickening experience if he’d been fully cognizant at the time, but despite that slowness, it had been quite clear to him that the hapless corpse had not noticed his presence at all. Focused on nothing but ridding itself of all that troublesome skin, it had picked and pulled until an entirely new, horrific creature was revealed, shiny and skinless and insatiably hungry, ready to hunt in the darkness.

The bright afternoon sunlight did little to spur that memory, but S’s newfound reasoning had been growing and fighting to take initiative. If he wanted to rescue John from the corpses, he would need to find a boney--to _be_ a boney--and surely not _all_ boneys conveniently transformed at night. All he needed was a dark corner and a candidate for transformation.

It took him less than four minutes to find the right corpse.

He’d never seen this specimen before (thank God). He suffered a moment of rare relief that it had not been his Labcoated companion he’d found scratching at her face in the corner of the atrium. He supposed the humane (did he qualify for that anymore?) thing to do would be to dispatch the vulnerable corpse before the unfortunate transformation was complete, but John had little enough time as it was.

Now S found himself pressed up against the booth, rancid blood and skin on his face and a crowd of dead scrambling in front of him. He snarled and growled and did his level best to convince them he was an unusually aggressive boney mid-transformation to forbid them coming any closer, but he knew it was up to the scent to mask his true intent. Besides, the smell of live, human John inside the booth was an enticement few corpses could pass up--even S struggled occasionally to resist its allure. Whether or not his plans worked, he would not be able to keep them off for long.

He needed to get John out now.

S gnashed his teeth, trying to think of something he could do to communicate with the man without causing him to reveal himself. Boneys and corpses rarely talked. Until John, neither had he. He’d had little to say and no one to listen. But now, he was thinking and observing and remembering things like…

“Murder.” He whispered to himself. A key to his past and, more importantly, a word John knew was important. “Muuuurderrrr…”  
He moaned it at first, then realized he’d need to be louder and more intimidating if he was to keep up his boney facade.

“Muuuurderrrrr!” He bellowed, spittle flying from his lips, eyes wide and deliberately wild. He could have sworn he felt blood pumping in his veins, a ghostly memory of adrenaline zinging through his system, but that was, of course, absurd. For now, he was content that the corpses seemed to be backing off.

He felt more than heard the shutters opening. John’s bewildered gaze tingled on the back of his neck. Before S could turn and catch his eye, his senses were overwhelmed by a wave of John’s scent, thick with fear and adrenaline in the close space.

S staggered, still growling like a man possessed, as he tried to wade through the enticing aroma and find reason on the other side. He needed to think clearly. If he couldn’t think, he couldn’t keep them away from John. No one was allowed to touch John. John belonged to him, not them.

He snarled and grabbed the human from the shed and buried his face in that fragrant throat, rubbing his soiled cheek against the skin there.

His last thought as his teeth met John’s skin was simple.

_Mine._

  
***

  



	8. Out of the Frying Pan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOW DO PEOPLE UPDATE ON A REGULAR BASIS?!?! what is a schedule???
> 
> Okay, you guys have been ULTRA sweet with your comments, and I love them, and I am coming around to reply to them soon, and THANK YOUUUU for being patient with me!!!
> 
> This fic is my beloved (only) child, and I will NOT abandon it, fear not! It is receiving constant attention, but my ability to manage a school schedule and applying to jobs and also add to this in significant ways is, uh, well, it's better than it was, but still not great. I might turn it into monthly updates just so I don't put anyone under any illusions and disappoint anyone (myself included).
> 
> As far as the chapter itself goes, it's up! Not exactly painstakingly edited, so I'll probably be making some minor changes later this week. Lmk if you see anything unforgivable and I'll fix it right up.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy and know that I love you all so much for reading and making me feel like this is actually worth reading. Stay safe and lovely, my friends! <3
> 
> -MH

S tore himself away from John’s neck, haunted by the terror he had seen in those dark, oh-so-alive eyes before he’d passed out. _No._ John could not be afraid of him. John was _his_. He’d all but screamed it at the entire city when--

\--the blood and bruising on the ruddy column of John’s throat provided a chilling reminder. He shuddered.

Regret and remonstrance were luxuries he could not afford at the moment, however. S hauled the doctor’s limp frame out of the shack, still snarling and snapping at the dead around him. They weren’t out of the woods yet. He still had to get John somewhere safe. He broke into a run, his dead muscles better acquainted with the activity since his panicked charge earlier.

At that pace, they quickly outstripped the horde of dead and found themselves in a quiet car park. He placed John gently on the tarmac. The man barely stirred, likely exhausted from the ordeal, but he still smelled _delectable._

S groaned. This hunger was getting bothersome. He reached into his pocket for a bite.

  


***

  


_They had finally arrived at the labs._

_John knew something. She was concerned, but it was more important to focus. They walked in, and her eyes immediately caught on the stacks of pharmaceutical boxes and clean sharps on the shelves. At least they would not come back empty-handed. The entire mission wouldn’t be a waste. She signaled the others to come in and begin salvage._

_She recalled the Minister’s odd order to keep an eye out for anything unusual. All she saw were normal lab supplies, but considering her...history with the place, she sharpened her gaze. The back wall contained a closet. She began to approach it when she heard the distinct sound of John’s silenced pistol. She turned to see a corpse with a hole between its eyes lying in the doorway._

_She smiled at John. He frowned back at her._

Right. What does he know?

_She shook herself. No time for that now. There would be more where that came from._

_Sure enough, she heard Soo Lin’s scream as corpses began to flood into the room. No point being quiet now. “Lestrade, block the entrance! Henry, cover him!” She barked. The silver-haired man across the room nodded and slipped behind a few corpses to shut the doors, closely followed by the taller, gangling young man._

_“Soo Lin! Sally! Perimeter!” She took down two corpses as she watched a young woman break away from the cluster and take up a wall position._

_“Soo Lin’s down, Morstan!” Sally yelled, spraying the far wall with bullets._

_“Shit. Billy, help Sally!” She had almost reached the closet. This mission had two objectives, and she’d be damned if she didn’t achieve them._

_“That’s Billy down, too!” Sally murmured, close enough for Mary to hear. A corpse kitted out in a familiar fashion--a hospital lab coat--was kneeled over Billy’s still frame. Two down._

_“Bloody hell.” One of her shots went wild as the floor tilted toward her. When she looked around, she saw what had grabbed her and screamed. It couldn’t be him. Not now._

_A macabre face of death, white skin smeared with blood and hunger, loomed over her with bared, blood-soaked teeth. His pale, empty eyes said that nothing could help her now._

_“John!” She yelled one last time._

  


***

  


S forcefully pulled himself from the memory, spitting out his mouthful of grey matter with horror and disgust. Was that what John had just seen? No wonder he’d fainted.

He found his own reflection in a pool of fetid water and cringed. S’s disguise had been necessary for John’s safety, but he had never hated himself more for what he actually was. _Dead. A corpse. The enemy._

He cleaned off his disguise as best he could and threw out what was left of Mary’s brain. Her last words had made one thing very clear.

_John is not mine._

An unsettling realization, but no more so than the hoarse shrieks of incoming boneys slamming themselves against the doors of the parking garage. The rotten grey flesh of their faces smeared against the glass, and S knew it would not take them long to gain entry. He grabbed a convenient piece of metal rebar and gripped it tightly. Just because John did not belong to him didn’t mean he wouldn’t protect him however he could. He eyed the unconscious man.

_Wake up, John._

  


***

  


_Please, God, let me live._

John Watson had been through his fair share of scrapes. As a small, proud little boy with a querulous and overtly queer sibling, he’d been fighting, fighting, fighting since birth, it seemed. Medical school had been a fight against disease and exhaustion. The army, a true fight of violence and terror.

When he’d been shot, he fought death and won, but recovering made him wish he hadn’t. He hadn’t wanted to fight anymore, and he’d figured death was the only end to it all. He’d fought himself more than anything else during that tense time, and when he’d made it through, Mary had been waiting on the other side. She’d been sweet enough that he’d fooled himself into thinking he’d finally gotten everything he’d fought for, that he was done fighting.

But then the Crisis started, and the true lesson John learned was that there was always more fighting to do. It was the lot of a soldier, he supposed, to fight all the way to the grave.

So he’d taken up arms again, fought corpses and disease and anarchy, all the time thinking that the battle would only end when he was dead, half-hoping for rest on that inevitable day.

And now here he was fighting death again. _When will it end?_ He thought as he glimpsed the corpses all around him, blurred and inconstant, like a half-remembered dream. There couldn’t possibly be anything left to fight for now. Death would be so easy. Why did he have to fight it?

“John!”

He jolted from his spot on the ground. Someone was screaming in his ear.

“John?”

He shook his head and closed his eyes. _Nope, not worth it._

“Idiot!”

_Arsehole_ , he responded in his head with a smirk.

“You’re smiling!” The voice sounded accusatory. And familiar. Deep, hoarse, slightly stilted, like--

“ _S?_ ” Fully awake and aware now, John’s eyes opened up to meet the eerily light blue gaze of the world’s only talking zombie. He was lying in an empty car park, hazily remembered corpses nowhere in sight. “Is that you?”

“Yes.” The response was simple, and the dead man had yet to retreat from the two inches of space directly above his face.

“What the f-”

An insistent pounding echoed from somewhere behind him. S’s eyes cut quickly toward the source of the sound before returning to John’s. “We need to go.”

John nodded. Yes, he supposed they had better. From what he could remember--

His hand flew to his aching neck. It was wet with blood. “Did you _bite_ me?”

Those pale eyes, still unnervingly close, flitted around John’s face before settling somewhere below his jaw. He backed off a bit, allowing John a chance to breathe. “-ish.”

“-ish?”

“It was...bite-ish.”

_What did that mean?_ John eyed the other man, fingers still searching his neck for a wound. S had already admitted that he still ate...people. But when he’d said he wouldn’t eat John, well...John believed him.

“Why?” John’s hands had finished their exploration of his neck. The skin remained unbroken, but he’d have a nasty bruise soon.

“You smelled good,” S replied shortly, offering nothing else by way of explanation. He still would not meet John’s gaze but proceeded to heave John off the floor and tug him toward the other end of the cavernous room.

John allowed himself to be manhandled, staring at the dead man openmouthed. _‘Smelled good’?_ He wanted answers, but that thunderous pounding was growing louder by the second.

“Take my hand,” S ordered as they entered the stairwell. He turned to wedge a metal bar in the door and then held out his hand.

John grabbed it breathlessly. The man might be dead, but those long legs of his made him _fast_. Corpses were _never_ fast. Well, except the skeletons--those terrifying creatures could outrun any human.

But S was clearly not a skeleton. Thin as a bloody beanpole, yes, but still flesh and blood. He should not be able to run at all, much less outpace John as they sprinted down the stairs.

He put his concerns aside as they reached the lower level and saw what awaited them.

  


***

  


A dozen or so corpses shambled amidst the debris on the next floor. The moment S and John emerged onto the floor, all eyes were on them.

S groaned. _Should have kept the rebar._ He put out an arm to protect John, lamenting that he’d wiped off his boney disguise to avoid giving John a coronary when he awoke. With all their running and panic, John’s scent was stronger and more alluring than ever. There was no trickery that would get them out of this.

He turned quickly, trying to assess the threat. The heavy flop of his laden coat hitting his legs reminded him they were not quite out of options yet, but first: _Level approx. 75m long x 50m wide. Ground floor. 13 dead. If we could just--Labcoat?_

S’s thoughts scattered when he saw the familiar white coat in the group of dead. He’d hoped to simply eliminate the threat, but he could not find it in himself to hurt the closest thing to a friend he’d had before John.

He froze when she turned and caught his eye. Her brown eyes seemed sharper than the last time he’d seen her, but maybe that was his own changing perceptions. Regardless, he could not help but notice those eyes flicking between his protective stance and the prey he was trying to protect.

“Shhh…” she hissed at him and then pointed at John. “Ee-eeat.”

He shook his head at her, and she clearly became frustrated. “E-eat!” She nearly yelled it this time.

“No.” Unlike her, he was not at all hesitant, the smoothness of his speech jarring in comparison with her stilted demands. He edged closer to John. “Mine.”

Her brow furrowed. “Y-our… ff-fooood?”

He shook his head again and put his hand on his chest. “Mine.”

She looked taken aback, but S saw a spark of something in her eyes before John’s yelling caught his attention.

“S!” John had abandoned their stealth strategy and was now slugging nearby corpses. “Have you got a plan?”

He didn’t. He’d been in the middle of creating one when Labcoat had caught his eye. Perhaps he’d gotten through to her, perhaps not, but a quick scan of the area showed she was nowhere to be found, and they still had a dozen dead to deal with.

John was dodging back and forth, fending off corpses. He was doing quite well, S thought, but there were too many, and every moment they stayed was a moment closer to sunset, to boneys breaking down doors and slaughtering indiscriminately.

_Punches are not going to do_ , S thought grimly as he moved between John and an oncoming corpse. His coat swung and bumped his thighs at the quick movement. _How odd--_

_The cans._ S could have hit himself for forgetting. Instead, he was going to hit someone else.

  


***

  


John decked another corpse and shook his hand out, wincing. They should have run while they had the chance. Now they were running out of space-- _and light_ , John mourned, looking at the waning stripes of light from the door--and his fists were an inconvenient and temporary fix.

Beside him, S had finished his little chat with one of the corpses and had not responded to his requests for a plan. Instead, he stood frozen for a moment before a small “Ah!” escaped his lips and he sprang into action.

John watched disbelievingly out of the corner of his eye as S began to take off his coat. It was far too late for S to worry about sartorial maintenance--though John had noticed that, as soiled and unkempt as the rest of the dead man’s clothes were, the greatcoat was oddly well-kept. It would seem indicate a level of sentiment for the article of clothing.

S’s next actions directly contradicted that notion.

If John had (privately) thought S looked rather cool wearing the coat it was nothing to the practically slow-motion glide of the garment swinging from around his shoulders--

\--and slamming against a nearby corpse’s skull to devastating effect.

John gaped as S swung the laden coat in a wide circle around himself, knocking corpses to the floor and giving them space to maneuver.

John waited for S to recover from his dramatic spin before taking his hand and running toward the door. The coat had cleared a path, but it wouldn’t last long. They had to hurry.

Thankfully, beating corpses in a foot race was still as easy as ever. Without rebar, they were forced to rely on the lock, but John did not plan on sticking around to find out how well it held.

S stood by him, and appearing almost flushed in the fading light as they caught their breaths. He removed his hand from their grasp, leaving John’s oddly cold, to put his coat back on.

Reminded of his trick a moment ago, John eyed the outer layer and asked, “How-?”

S was resettling the garment in question around his shoulders and did not even pause at the question. He just grinned and gave a pointed glance at his pockets as he directed his efforts to tugging the collar to a standing position.

John sighed in exasperation at the unhelpful response before deciding to find out for himself. He reached a hand across himself into one of S’s pockets and found-- “Beans?”

The object in his hand was an innocent tin of beans, and even amidst the chaos and chasing and attacks, John found himself tackled by two rather unexpected sensations. The first was easy to diagnose: hunger. Beans sounded fantastic right now. The second, however, was some sort of shivering? Shuddering? He opened his mouth to gasp and what emerged was the smallest giggle.

S had finished adjusting his clothing-- _vain zombie_ \--and looked at John questioningly.

John couldn’t help it. He collapsed into a fit of giggles. He was holding a can of beans, leaning against a door that was the only thing between him and a horde of corpses. Beside him was a friendly zombie who was hauling at least four cans of beans in his pockets and had used them to defeat said horde. It was absurd.

“That was...the most ridiculous thing I have ever done,” he said, finally recovering from his laughter.

“Indeed.” S smiled, nodding at the hand still holding the beans. John bent to return them to his pocket, and when he straightened, he found himself quite...close. S made no move to put any distance between them, and John felt his cheeks heat. This...man. This ridiculous man who had just saved his life for the third time in as many days. For some reason, S had given up his habits, his diet, his very lifestyle for John. “Why me?” He whispered, his breath close enough to ruffle the other man’s dark curls.

S opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say a word, a tearing shriek interrupted the strangely intimate moment. Their heads snapped toward the sound, and at the sight that greeted them filled John with horror.

The sun had finally sunk below the horizon, turning the city into a maze of darkness. John felt S’s hand creep into his own and gulped.

The skeletons were coming.

  


***


	9. Into the Fire

They were still holding hands.

It was an odd thing to notice in the middle of a tense situation. _Wouldn’t it be easier to run separately?_ John pondered privately. Even thinking thus, however, his grip stayed firm. Last time he’d been separated from S was still fresh in his mind. They were better together. Just the two of them against the rest of the world.

There was a time when London at night would have been nearly as bright as London during the day. As soon as decent businesses closed shop for the day, the indecent ones lit up for the night. John had wistful memories of his time spent as a young man in London at both types of establishment. Piccadilly Circus had kept things glaringly bright and commercial at all hours anyway. He supposed those huge screens were black now. 

What little shelter had been provided by the parking structure was rendered null and void now by the setting of the sun. Objects that must have been cars and buildings and such all carried a vague blue cast. He couldn’t see a bloody thing.

He could hear just fine though. Disturbing scrabbling and scratching sounds echoed around the city. Small, inhuman grunts and a truly haunting shrieks seemed to come from just behind him, and the sounds of quickening footsteps grew ever closer. S was still determinedly running, tugging John behind him, occasionally jerking him sideways to dart down some unseen side alley or throughway. He, apparently, could see just fine, for which John was extremely thankful.

That, combined with the chill in the air which he knew S couldn’t feel, had him feeling just the tiniest bit envious of the dead.

He nearly brained himself on the edge of the grate when S pulled him down to climb into the tunnel beneath the stage.

_Home._

John shook himself. This was not his home. Technically, he didn’t have a home. The Citadel certainly didn’t count. The place had all the sterile utilitarianism of a military compound, and it hardly helped that it had once been a prison. It was a place to live, but it was not home. Yet somehow during his few days here--in an abandoned theatre in the middle of zombie-infested Old London--he had felt more at home than anywhere else in the last decade.

_Home is where the heart is._ At least that’s how the old saying went. But as John was tugged down the (somehow even _darker_ ) tunnel and onto the stage by a being who, by definition, had no working heart, he wondered if maybe the old sayings were wrong. Even figuratively, this was a dead man he had known only a few days. S. He didn’t even know his name.

John was jolted out of his thoughts by the feeling of cold metal against his palm. For one bright, shining moment, he thought it was his gun, but the moment passed as he firmed his grip on the can of beans S was pressing upon him.

“Eat.” S urged.

_With what?_ John wondered, swaying slightly. The adrenaline from the chase had abated, leaving him weak and shaky. He definitely needed food. A simple tin of beans sounded heavenly, for God’s sake. But his makeshift knife from earlier was long gone, and he felt close to collapsing.

“Ugh.” S’s voice came from behind him. John panicked for a moment when he felt two large hands grasp his shoulders and jerk him off balance, only to find himself collapsing onto a soft, familiar surface. It was the chair he’d slept in the last few nights. Had they reached the storage room already?

John sat back in the chair, the can of beans dangling limply in his hand. He didn’t realize he had drifted off until he felt a prodding against his shoulder. S had (somehow) opened the tin and was now poking him with the handle-end of a spoon.

Grabbing the food gratefully, John didn’t even question how S had gotten into the metal containers until S handed him a second already-opened can.

“How…?” John pointed wordlessly at the jagged rim of the container.

S grinned and reached into one of his capacious pockets to withdraw an elaborately decorated knife. _Not all stage props then._ “Is that--?”

“—a dagger...you see...before you?” He flipped the blade in his hand so that it faced John hilt-first and raised his eyebrows.

_Dear God, he’s quoting Shakespeare now._ John shook his head and grasped the weapon, feeling its heft and balance. “Wish I’d had this a few hours ago,” he admitted. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You…didn’t ask.” S’s angular face portrayed casual indifference as he took back the knife, but his hurt at John’s recent escape shone in his eyes.

John sighed. “Look, I’m sorry I went out without you, but I was very hungry, and honestly, it’s been _days._ I can’t survive on beer alone. Not all of us can sustain ourselves on brilliant deductions and violin solos.” John imagined he saw what might have been a blush gracing S’s pale cheeks, but of course, that was impossible for a corpse.

He continued, “Besides, we’ve been cooped up in this drafty old theatre for long enough. I need some fresh air, a little adventure, _something._ ” His eyes met S’s as he said this, deep blue boring into icy grey.

S met him look for look, his lips quirking up in a small smile. “Could be…dangerous.”

John huffed out a laugh, remembering S’s first challenge. “That won’t work on me every time, you know, you ponce. It was my idea anyway!” He licked his lips, trying to remember why it was such a bad idea to indulge his adrenaline addiction.

A distant screech outside provided a timely reminder. “It’s pitch black out anyway. _You_ may be able to see out there, but I don’t fancy being blindly pulled about by a madman in a coat.” _Again._ Although really, all he objected to now was the “blind” part; everything else had been...surprisingly okay.

_Fantastic_ , actually, the little voice in his head corrected. John smiled sleepily. Even with body exhausted and appetite sated, his blood still warmed at the thought of doing it all again. As he was about to drop off, the feeling of pale, dead eyes watching from the chair across from him brought only comfort. _Absolutely fantastic._

  
***

  
_Did he realize he said that out loud?_

S threw himself onto the couch and stared at John as he slept. It had happened just after he’d finished his meal. A scarce 37 seconds, by S’s count. His horrified fascination at the man’s ability to drop into slumber with such abruptness ( _likely picked up from the military_ ) had transformed into astonishment when John’s last semi-conscious action was to smile at S and murmur, “Absolutely fantastic.”

John had been particularly vocal in his praise of S’s deductive skills. Even S’s own recovering mind knew that it was not normal for a corpse to function this way. He deduced he had already been rather a genius before he died (although the details of that life were still frustratingly elusive), so it should not have been any surprise to hear it confirmed by a living human. But it was a human whose opinion he cared about. A man he...cared about. And that man seemed...quite chuffed to be in his company. _“Brilliant.” “Fantastic.”_ The hits just kept coming.

S ripped himself from those giddy thoughts. Normally he would be sneaking a bite as John slept, but he could not tear his eyes from the puzzle that was John Watson. And even if he could, he’d been quite put off his normal diet by the image of himself from a victim’s--from _John’s fiance’s_ \--perspective.

He shuddered. No, there would definitely _not_ be any feeding. Not tonight. _Not ever._ What was to be done then?

He tapped his fingers against the threadbare sofa. John was sleeping. The deep sleep of a man whose adrenaline levels had been through the roof mere hours before. John would not be a source of entertainment to him until he awoke, as interesting as his last sleepy proclamations had been. And food was no longer going to be providing him with those lovely (and not so lovely), diverting memories to pass the time.

_Bored._

He sat up. That was his own voice. Ringing in his head. It sounded...well, it sounded bored but more to the point, it was smooth and well-formed, displayed excellent elocution, rife with disdain and public school education. It was his voice...but not. It may as well have been the voice of a stranger for all he knew of the man who owned it.

All he had before John was that one word. _Murder._ The fact that this was the word he remembered from his old life had always been a puzzle to him. He’d been walking around in a fog, unable to discern what was important and what was useless. No new information, just the one word, floating slowly but unhelpfully beyond his mental grasp.

Then John had shown up. Had asked _questions._ S suspected he was the only corpse who’d been asked an actual question in years, and in his rush to find answers, the fog had started to dissipate. He had more words now, more information. He’d been an intelligent, well-educated man. He could...see things other people couldn’t. His clothing, violin-playing, and familiarity with the opera house indicated he’d been well-off, likely high society, with a well-developed sense of drama. He preferred to text. Murder was important to him somehow. And now this: boredom.

A smart, rich man who’d been bored often and obsessed with his phone. He was beginning to think he didn’t want to know about the man he’d been; he sounded like rather a spoiled brat.

But he was on the cusp of a discovery, he knew it. Even if this epiphany was that he’d been an awful villain of a man, wielding wealth and intelligence like a blade against his enemies, he wanted to know about it. He could...enact justice, make amends, redeem himself, do _something_ besides wander around waiting for something more.

S’s fingers paused in their tapping. Hmm, mark two more traits: inquisitiveness and a sense of justice. Although the latter might be John rubbing off on him. Still, it seemed prudent to become more introspective. It stood to reason that all of the information he needed to rediscover himself was still inside his mind.

With that in mind and a sleeping John nearby, S propped his chin on his fingers and began to think.

  
***

  
John had been having an absolutely _lovely_ dream. Something with warm bedsheets and loads of bare skin. It was an absolute tragedy when he was jolted awake by the demand--

“Ask me...questions.”

“Whuh?” He’d no idea what time it was, but he wasn’t ready to regain consciousness quite yet.

“Not...good enough,” S’s voice sounded impatient.

John’s eyes squinted open to see a pale face looming over his chair. Again. How he’d already gotten used to being awoken this way was beyond him. He sighed and rubbed his eyes, shooing away the undead pest. “Time is’t?”

S cocked his head to the side, seeming disgruntled at being told to move away, but after a moment he reached in his pocket and withdrew John’s phone, showing him the clock display.

John peered at him incredulously, growing irritatingly closer to fully awake. “Y’know that doesn’t mean anything, right?” He waved his hand in the air. “No satellites?”

S continued to stare at him, making him wonder if he had some sort of terrible bedhead. He smoothed a hand over his hair self-consciously. “Where did you get that anyway? Thought you gave it back.” He gestured to the phone S was carefully placing back into his pocket.

Without answering, S produced the dagger and held it out to John. “Trade?”

John chuckled and took the weapon. “Knew you were gonna want that phone, the way you text. Just keep it safe for me.” He examined the knife. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a gun somewhere?” S shook his head. “Figures. Don’t have spare bullets anyway. Empty gun doesn’t really help against a horde of zombies.” He caught S’s eye. “Few cans of beans and a poncy coat are more appropriate for that job.”

The corners of S’s lips tipped up a little at that. John laughed and scooted forward in his seat, finally ready to surrender to what he now saw was full daylight. “So what now?”

S’s eyebrows furrowed. “Ask me questions.”

_Right._ “Believe I just did,” he quipped, but before S could correct him, he continued, “What kind of questions?”

“About me.”

His straight-faced answer startled another laugh out of John. “Sounds a bit self-absorbed, if you ask me.” John eyed S, who was clearly struggling to be patient as he sat in the chair opposite. “Thought you didn’t know anything about yourself. How will me asking about it help?”

S sighed. He might not have full control of his voice yet, but that sigh communicated every bit of frustration and disdain he felt John was inflicting upon him. “It helps.” He said finally.

John scratched his head. “Well, I’m not quite sure what I’m meant to ask about.” The whole situation felt very much like the awkward first half of a first date. Which was ridiculous. If this were a date, he’d been through too much with S for it to be their first. _And it wouldn’t be with a dead man,_ John hurried to reassure himself, although it wasn’t clear even in his own head which part he objected to: the “dead” or the “man”.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “So, what made you decide to live in the theatre?” _What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?_ John swallowed a hysterical giggle.

S tilted his head to rest on the back of the chair and brought his hands up in their steepled, prayer-like pose again. “Safe. Known. Close.”

John could see the safe part, definitely, and it made sense that the posh man S had clearly been would know the theatre fairly well, but close? “Close to what?”

S raised his head, forehead crinkled in thought. “To...the start.” He sprang up from the chair and rushed out the door.

John gaped after him, wondering just what in the world that meant. He’d only asked one question, for God’s sake!

Before he could even take a guess at where S was going, the man himself popped his head back into the doorway. “Bring the knife.”

John grinned and grabbed the weapon, ready to follow the mad zombie into battle.

  
***

  
It had never occurred to S to question where he came from. He’d wondered who he was before, what he’d done, who had known him, how he’d died, but all of that was before his death. After his death, he remembered everything; he’d just never bothered to make the connection between the two.

He knew down to the very day how long ago he’d “woken up” (which was the best description he had for it at present), and he knew where it had occurred. It didn’t seem to matter at the time, or during any of the nearly three years that had passed since because all he really thought about those days was how hungry he was.

But then John had _asked_ , and suddenly S saw a web of evidence instead of mere irrelevant facts.

Roland Kerr Further Education College, the sign said. And he’d thought it was just an office building.

It was a mere two blocks away from the Royal Opera House. It was _close_ , and for some reason, that _mattered._ What had happened here? Why was this the place he came from?

  
***

  
John had to admit, he was a bit disappointed to find their destination was a college.

They’d ventured out of the theatre, John necessarily wearing a fresh coat of distinctly-not-fresh blood harvested from S’s arm. He’d winced when S had beckoned for the dagger and sliced his own arm open. John reminded himself that he was a doctor and S was a corpse, which meant none of this should bother him. He’d instinctively gone to bandage up the wound but stopped when he saw the nearly stagnant flow of blood. _Right. No heartbeat._

When they’d stopped after less than five minutes, John had to wonder if the whole bloody ( _haha_ ) process had been strictly necessary, but he kept silent as he watched S pick one of the two identical buildings and head to the door. The dead man seemed deep in thought, and John wondered if this had been an important place to him when he was alive.

“Were you a student here?” He asked as they walked down the eerily empty halls.

“No. Uni.” He grunted, then looked surprised, as if this was news to him as well.

John began to see the merit of S’s request to be interrogated earlier. Hoping to startle more information out of him, he asked, “Which one?” He’d bet it was one of the biggies. Cambridge. Oxford. King’s.

He really should’ve been expecting the shrug he got in response.

John frowned at him. “Then how do you know? Maybe this place is your old stomping grounds.”

S scoffed. “Woke up here.” He ran a bony hand along each door frame as they passed.

John followed the motion of his hand with his eyes. S could really use a bit of extra weight on him. He looked painfully thin. Could corpses gain weight? None of the corpses he’d tested had seemed to gain or lose mass.

“Wait,” John stopped as he processed what S had said, “what do you mean ‘woke up’?”

S kept going, still stroking doors. “The first...thing I...remember,” he paused at another door then went into the room, “is here.”

The room resembled every other classroom John had peered into as they’d walked down the hall. He’d no idea how S pinpointed this location amongst all the other rooms or even between the two buildings.

“So this is where you died?” When S just shrugged again, he rolled his eyes. _Oh Lord, we’d better not be back to the shrugging._

“Actually,” John started, struck by a recollection, “I think one of the attacks happened here.”

S looked at him sharply. “Murder?”

John shook his head. “No, not even any accidental deaths. It was early days. I actually treated one of the wounded. All of them needed antipsychotics and superficial care, but no one died or was...turned.” He looked around the room. “I never even saw the place.”

S’s fingers rested against his lips once more.

“Is that significant? What does it mean?”

“No idea.” S whirled away to inspect the edges of the room, ducking and leaning and all-in-all looking as ridiculous as John supposed a talking, texting, high-level-thought-thinking zombie ought to.

Interesting that he had become so nimble, though, John mused to himself. As much as he was interested in S’s “investigation” he couldn’t help looking at the man from a doctor’s clinical perspective. The fact that he retained fine motor skill functions like violin-playing and high-speed texting, yet had only just begun to regain (albeit quite rapidly) more basic functions like running and talking was upside-down. Or backwards.

“John.”

Startled, John looked and shot S a questioning look where he stood by a window.

“Look.” He pointed to the glass. Unsurprisingly, several of the panes had been shattered, leaving jagged pieces along the frame. John thought briefly of his improvised bottle knife and whether something like this would have been a suitable alternative--

“No. Here.” S rolled his eyes and pointed to the bottom pane, broken like the others but with a circular spray of cracks leading out from a point on the edge of the glass. It looked oddly familiar.

“Is that a--”

S cut him off. “Bullet hole,” he said shortly. John suppressed his annoyance at the interruption; the man had only just starting talking again, but John had the feeling his days of being able to finish a sentence were numbered.

“So someone shot through this window,” John said flatly. He was less than impressed. When S frowned at him, he continued, “We’re in a zombie apocalypse, mate.” He hurried on, trying to forget the weird taste of ‘mate’ in reference to the undead genius. “Bullets have been flying everywhere for the last five years. How do you know this isn’t just a stray shot?”

John thought he’d made a decent point, so he was surprised when S just grinned and reached into his pocket for his phone. _Oh no._

A minute of quicksilver typing later, John was staring at a rather eloquently degrading paragraph of text detailing every way in which he was wrong. He hadn’t even finished reading the screen before S withdrew the phone, smug grin firmly in place.

“So you’re saying what? That someone _deliberately_ shot into the building during this attack? What would be the purpose of that? Surely any threat would already have been neutralized by the corpses…” But there weren’t any corpses. No fatalities. It wasn’t even clear what had caused the whole thing, and none of the victims’ eyewitness accounts had been reliable due to mental instability. But what if…?

S raised an eyebrow and nodded at him, as if following his thought process. He held up the phone with a mere two words on the dimmed screen.

**No witnesses.**

  
***

  
Thoughts flashed through his head faster and faster, small observations becoming larger connections. _Of course_ it wasn’t a stray shot. _Of course_ the presence of a lone gunman outside one of the earlier attacks Before wasn’t a _coincidence._ He scoffed under his breath.

_What do we say about coincidence?_

S was too consumed by his line of thought to register the unfamiliar voice, the memories, but even so, he could answer the question immediately: _The universe is rarely so lazy._

He had theories. Of course he had theories. But he was following a trail long gone cold, and the consequences of following it to its end could be...unpleasant. He wrinkled his nose in distaste at the inadequate description. Disheartening. Hurtful.

And the last thing he wanted to do was hurt John Watson.

The man himself had just looked up from the phone screen, a deep furrowed carved between his brows. “What--”

S held up a finger to cut off his line of questioning. He refused to voice (text) his theories before thinking it through. And here was no place to do it.

He whirled around and walked out of the room without another word, smirking as he heard John’s “Oi!” and the sounds of the other man scrambling to keep up as he followed his hectic thoughts down the hall.

Things were starting to fall together more quickly as he swept down the stairs, heedless of John’s worried voice behind him. If there was anything to cover up as part of the attacks, surely it was not the effects but the cause. What caused the attacks? What created the symptoms? His own work in the l--

“S!” John’s voice, previously an insistent buzz at the back of his mind, now slammed into his consciousness with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer.

“What?” He snapped irritably. The two of them stood just inside the heavily damaged main doors where they’d started. S got no further in his questioning as an unearthly shrieking split the air between them.

_Oh no._ His eyes met John’s before reluctantly following the sound to its source. A hellscape of darkness and skeletons greeted him through the shattered glass of the lobby doors. No sturdy carpark doors this time. No rebar or cans of beans. There would be no cheating death and giggling in the aftermath.

His gaze found John’s again as the gap between them and the boneys grew ever smaller. He watched as John withdrew the dagger and held it in front of him in rock-steady hands. They shared no words, and with a nearly imperceptible nod, S himself away and faced his fate. 

_Once more unto the breach._

  


***

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp, there's a new chapter. at long last. after....7 months? short version is simply that I quit my old job and went in an ENTIRELY different direction by starting flight school. good times.
> 
> please continue to expect new chapters--I may have cooled down on BBC Sherlock a bit, but I'm still very into this story and would not have posted it in the first place if I intended to leave it unfinished. my schedule is loaded tf up, so updates'll be just as sporadic as ever (although hopefully never to quite this extreme again!!!).
> 
> feel free to hit me up on my [tumblr](merlinhurricane.tumblr.com) if you want the long version of the last 7 gd months or if you just want to bug me--I love talking to people!
> 
> anyway, thanks for sticking with it, whoever is still here reading! <3
> 
> -MH

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta-ed, not britpicked (yet).
> 
> Lmk what you think! Kudos feed the egos. Comments are the best. Your input is appreciated and sorely needed!


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